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archetypal-archivist · 8 months

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Notes for Outer Wilds World-Building

-head canon heavy, but grounded in reason I think-

Healthcare: Lots of treating symptoms but not a ton of fixing the thing that caused the initial problem as the Hearthian body is remarkably sturdy and when self-healing can't take care of it, it would take some advanced healthcare to fix it (ex. punctured lung, strong infection). And that's not always something the Hearthians have, as why would they put a ton of effort into advanced pharmaceuticals like penicillin and invasive internal surgeries when it's so rare that someone gets hurt to that point and doesn't immediately die from it in a matter of days? I picture most medicine is herbal in nature, plant-derived and highly concentrated if necessary, such as opioids/morphine for pain that can be taken by injection until you get home and can patch yourself up. Bandages and bed rest and going off of what's taught to you (with a dose of improvising) are key to Hearthian healthcare. For the Hearthians, it's less unwillingness to help in cases of disability and more not being sure how, as the tech to do so would need to be jury-rigged or made from scratch. How well this helps varies as some things like missing limbs and damaged hearing can be accounted for but things like malfunctioning kidneys can't. Ironically, diabetes would spell bad news for a Hearthian.

Food: They don't have birds on Timber Hearth or else we'd see a lot more primitive wings for flying, so that means the animal life differs from earth. Lots of bugs and amphibians and fish, but very few mammals if any as fur is weird to the Hearthians. Hearthians are likely omnivores, given their history, but no trapping of land animals beyond insects. I imagine mostly teams of gatherers picking food from known locations and being careful about how much they take, and maybe some "controlled burnings" to clear out unwanted brush and give room to grow for the plants they actually want. The burnings may be more of an accident but the effect is the same regardless. Berries, nuts (especially pine nuts), cattail tubers and pith, water reed shoots, edible wild greens, and bread made from the flour of ground up tubers/acorns/pine nuts is common. This is supplemented by fish, the fat of which (Google candle fish) and the gelatin formed by boiling their bones are also used in many things. Marshmallows are made the old way, from mallow roots and sugar cane. Snow covered in sap or molasses is a treat, made more common with the invention of rockets that let you grab snow and fly it back to the village before it melts. Chera (borrowed from the fandom) is a tough, fibrous fruit that is sort of bready and is used much like apples are as a thickener in bread and eaten as mash on its own. Pickling, smoking, and canning are very common in Hearthian culture and are key ways of preserving food for when certain key gathered plants are out of season. During the insect mating season when the flies are out in full force, people will smack the clouds of bugs with sap-covered sheets of metal, scrape the bugs off, and grill them up into patties like burgers. This time of year is all hands on deck and not everyone likes eating fly patties but as food, it's incredibly nutritious and ground up flies are sometimes added to food that is lacking. Cooking is communal for the bulk of it, with a town cook pot and storehouse being open to the public to pull from, but if you want to eat beyond standard hours or mass-produced fare, you're on your own and you best hope you know how to cook over a wood fire stove. Filling the communal food pot is often a job foisted on hatchlings and the elders supervise. Specialty foods like sap wine are a trade item or are saved for celebrations and traditions.

Travel: Hearthians don't have wheeled carts as getting things into their crater via wheeled cart would be difficult at best. Instead they'll drag chopped down trees where they need to go via sleds or float them on the rivers or lower them into the crater with elevators. Anything else they'll carry down personally. To get around the planet, Hearthians just walk and if it takes more than a day, they camp along the way. Now that ships are a thing however, travel has shrunk the world by a lot- not that it does the average Hearthian much good. The ships are dangerous, prone to causing fires if one tries to land on Timber Hearth proper as rockets plus grass equals bad. A skilled pilot can pick a decent landing spot that's damp or barren enough to not be a problem, but it's usually so far from where you want to go that it's better to walk anyway. Said average Hearthians also do not like dealing with g-forces or potential death. Those are the only reasons why it's not normal for astronauts to ferry average Hearthians around like a taxi service or to take materials from point A to point B across the planet. None of this matters on the Attlerock however, as there's nothing to catch fire there, so ships will haul stuff up there all the time at Esker and Hornfels' behest. Rocket fuel is made from flammable gases pumped up from underground by the mining equipment as waste. It used to be released into the atmosphere to keep the miners from suffocating or exploding (a problem, sometimes those spouts would catch alight) but Slate had the bright idea of storing it in tanks under pressure. They already had pressurized air for the miners at the deepest depths to breathe where air was hard to come by, why couldn't they bottle up the waste gases to dispose of more safely? Like burning it elsewhere?

Clothing: Fabric is made from the fibers of a linen-like plant called flush, names for the purplish hue at the base of the reed's stem. The weavers' house is filled with Hearthians whose job it is to separate the fibers out and spin them into thread. From there, the weaver in charge of the loom will dye the thread with plant-based dyes and use a flying loom to quickly weave bolts of fabric. It takes a LOT of thread to make fabric but thanks to the weavers' bugging Slate into making them into a machine running off water power, the thread-making time has been cut down significantly. However, the whole process still takes a while so most Hearthians only own a few pieces of clothing and they're expected to patch it, hand-me-down it, and wash it until it is literally in rags before they get more. Hatchlings get the worst of it, they get pretty much nothing but hand-me-down clothes as they outgrow things too fast for unique outfits for each of them. Scarves, hats, and handkerchiefs are an exception and are often the only piece of clothing a hatchling has that survives to adulthood, which makes them all the more precious. Dresses- which take more fabric- and anything patterned or multicolored is a sign of indulgence/finery or a very nice gift and is such relegated to fancy clothes for fine events. Shoes are made of fish leather or treated fabric strips wrapped around a wood sole and structure and then sewn in place.

Economy: Hearthians run on a trade economy, with every person expected to contribute in some way. You are always guaranteed food from the communal cook pot and shelter in either a house of your own or on someone else's couch/floor, but beyond that you get side-eyed if you ask for things too often without offering something in return. Fortunately, Hearthians have a strong oral tradition and a very relaxed (boring) lifestyle so most are happy to trade gossip and stories for basic amenities. Building houses, weaving fabric, gathering food, working in the mines, and watching the hatchlings and tasks like those are ones that are never required for people to do, you can walk off and take a break whenever. However, it's seen as poor taste to do that for more than a few days at a time without cause because if you aren't working, you're letting your fellow Hearthians down. If you can't do big work for health reasons or lack of skill, you're expected to pick up small work like knitting, patching things up, cooking at the communal food pot, etc. What most hatchlings end up doing is they either find a passion and just continue with it into a proper "job" that helps the village in some way, they get an apprenticeship, or they get picked up by an adult and pretty much conscripted in order to "keep them out of trouble." Fire watch and astronaut and jobs like it are jobs of high prestige and are very demanding in the body, and as such run as apprenticeships with Gossan and Tektite selecting who they want to teach from those that come up to them and ask to learn. Such jobs don't do much to physically help the village (beyond bringing back space relics but those aren't always useful to the village at large) but they do bring in a ton of interesting stories and those are prime currency for the Hearthians.

Life Cycle: Hearthians are hermaphrodites that breed like fish do- during certain times of year, Hearthians may feel the urge to slip down to the river and release sperm and eggs into the water. Couples can go together, but most don't make much of it, seeing them as temporary dalliances or choosing to put up with being a little hot and itchy for a few days, refusing to go, and then the season is done for them for the year. The sperm and eggs mingle in warm underground pools and incubate there until they get hard and heavy enough to be picked up by the current. Due to how the waters of Timber Hearth run, the eggs more or less end up being carried to the same place every year where Hearthians in charge of raising hatchlings go to pick them up. The eggs are candled to check for life, then swaddled and placed into cribs to hatch. Hatchlings are raised in batches together in the Hatchling House, with sick ones quarantined in a back room to keep the rest from getting ill (so things like measles don't wipe out a whole generation). Hatchlings are fed mash until their baby teeth fall out, then they are fed real food like fish with bones in it. They only are named when the caretaker is sure that they will survive their first month or three of life, then they are introduced to the village by that name. They are allowed to go outside for the first time once they can walk and talk a little bit, an occasion marked by giving them shoes. After that, a hatchling may leave the Hatchling House to live on their own once they have a place to stay lined up, work, and they either can drink sap wine (which hatchlings don't have the enzymes to digest) or meet a certain height. As Hearthians age, the ears droop more, the skin pales, and the body starts failing. Past a certain age a Hearthian just kinda stops healing, as if all their sturdiness is limited to their younger years, and if they survive past even that, then their mind begins to go. Deaths are grieved and the dead buried with song and music being played with a space being left in the song for the deceased to "play a solo" and the rest of the band picking up after as a reminder that life goes on. In a few rare cases, hatchlings can imprint on an adult and vice versa, which gives rise to more "standard" parent child bonds and frequently, apprenticeships.

Calendar: The Hearthian planet does have seasons, sort of, but mostly a "hot and dry" vs "cool and wet" divide. No snow, their winters are just slightly more rain than usual and their summers are slightly warmer and with a chance for thunderstorms. However, there are still holidays involved with the changing of the seasons, mostly tied to when food is more or less available and when the solstices are. The alignment of the planets is also celebrated but that's a more recent celebration that popped up and it intensified into a major holiday only when the observatory got built with its ability to lock down alignments to exact dates. Breeding season is an informal holiday, being a few days in Spring and Autumn where sap wine is plentiful and people are expected to take some time off from work to relax. Hearthian formal holidays involve getting everyone in the village to sing, dance, and play music together around a bonfire. Stories and sap wine flow thick and fast and the best storytellers and musicians are treated to the best food and treats. Musicians will sometimes "duel" for funsies to see who is better at improvising and technical skills, to the joy of the crowd. Informal celebrations, like when an astronaut launches for the first time or one comes home or a batch of hatchlings are given a name on their name day lead to similar events, just scaled down some with only non-busy people attending. However, Hearthians love a good party so many will make time for such gatherings if they can.

#outer wilds #world building #my writing

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ignitification · 3 years

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Midoriya Izuku - Green for Hope, Red for Burning Passion

I always asked myself why exactly Horikoshi has changed Midoriya's character design so drastically.

Indeed, we go from a character called Yamikumo who looks like a feral child with the bad habit of eating his nails off, and drinks more coffee than humanly possible to an anxious bunny who smiles awkwardly and does not know how to accept compliments.

To me, the difference is absolutely insane. Izuku's hair and eyes are uniform and reflect his character and surname. However, a thing that I find peculiar is how the dark (Black/Green) and the Red theme are a constant throughout particular tellings of his character.

The legendary red shoes are one of Deku's main features. It's part of his character. However, I just got to think why exactly (especially having an idea on why was green used for him) and I think that the answer might be very very banal. However, I do think that this is not the only reason.

First of all, there is the most simple reason which I could think of: Midoriya Izuku is described as plain. In my opinion, plain does not really define Midoriya but the concept of him being bland and capable of melting into background is fundamental to express him in the most little details (however, there are few things which inwardly contradict this description: first and foremost his freckles). But as it might be, and Midoriya is indeed considered not worthy look at for more than once (at least as described in the manga - which is also one of the reason why his design has been changed so much, as Yamikumo had literally zero chance to go unnoticed), it appears clear how this suppression of character, of wanting to relegate Mido to a background role is what instead pushes Izuku forward to make a bold choice of something like wearing red shoes. They are strikingly particular, and noticeable: which means that Midoriya is not happy about being an npc, but instead wants to be noticed and in some way stand out.

The second reason, which I mulled over if was relevant enough is All Might. A recurrent color in all All Might's costumes is Red (and Blue, which kind of reminds of Superman and the American Flag. A fact that I found interesting as well if how AM wears Blue, Yellow and Red while Midoriya wears Green and Red, and of course Blue and Yellow together form Green).

And finally the third and final reason (at least, for now) is that Red, as a colour reminds Deku of Kacchan (even if arguably, we see in the first panel of the manga how Izuku wore already his shoes so this might be false and instead it might refer to the fact that Red is Izuku’s favourite colour only), who we know he associates with victory. As the mental image of Kacchan, who was red eyes, is his substitute for him being able to stand proud, strong and capable to win, Izuku might want to express this strive to be strong.

But what do these two colours mean, stand alone ?

As for Green: this colour, in different cultures, is associated with "Hope" . I think here the main gist and general going is that Midoriya represents Hope for the Heroes, Hope for the Unwanted, the Broken and the Damned (the Villains). I talked about Izuku being a Symbol of the New Society here, but in short, with Izuku Midoriya being fundamentally associated to the colour green, I think Horikoshi wants to express two things: how Izuku never loses hope (to be a hero, to have a quirk, to be a friend to Katsuki who bullied him for years or Shouto who straight up challenged him even before getting to know him, to reach and to save everyone) and how he represents and spreads hope for others (Eri, Kouta, the same Todoroki and Katsuki).

Green indicates life, renewal, harmony and safety. Which, in this sense, points out Izuku's nature as a person and how he is bound to feel restless unless he provides comfort to everyone, and that desire to save desperately anyone who he can reach. Green is a calming and soothing colour. It also stands for prosperity, freshness and progress - which point out not only the conclusion of Deku being N1 Hero, but as well at him 'changing up' the society and becoming the Symbol of Hope and Change (on which I briefly touched upon here).

However, on a negative side it also stands for Greed (wanting to be a hero and follow AM steps even when he had a hard time adapting his body to his new quirk) and Envy (Bakugō first and foremost and the generally heroes and those who has time to wield their power properly). In this negative meaning of the colour, I think Izuku’s selfless nature comes to the surface even more: how he feels bound to feel negative emotions which spur his renewal and development (after all, he did unlock Black Whip after Monoma had insulted Bakugou), but at the same time use this emotion toward a bigger goal (him being mad at Shigaraki, but at the same time wanting to save him - I wrote about this too here).

Green, is, finally, the colour of the Heart chakra: an expression of how Midoriya puts everything before him, because his heart cannot take the selfishness of thinking of himself first, which also come hand in hand with his sacrificing nature and reminds of his name meaning and the association made with the number 9. Indeed, “Opening the Heart chakra allows a person to love more, empathise, and feel compassion” - which in short, stands for an externalisation of Mido’s personality.

On a shorter note, in Japan, the colour green represents youth, eternity, vitality and energy - which, in its own way is both a confirmation and a denial to other references made in Izuku’s character, such as his dangerous nature, him not being concentrated to live on for more than he is allowed to fulfil his duty (him being tied to number 9 and so on), and at the same time it reminds us of OfA, as it gains more power and energy and at his cheery, youthful persona.

As for Red, as the colour of Blood, it also stands to indicate '' Danger, Sacrifice, Courage" (which reconnects to his name's theory and numerology, of which I talked about here, in short).

In addition, red is usually used to professionally gain attention (it's hard to miss something so bright) and convey confidence. We know for a fact that Deku has been wearing red shoes since he was a kid (or at least, since he met Bakugō, which coincides with Izuku being four) and that despite being Quirkless, he always showed courage in standing out to people even when they thought of him as 'inferior' because on his unusual condition.

Among other negative meaning, there is an overflow of temper, anger, agitation, and overbearing, demanding and oppressive behaviours. As clear as day, these characteristics relate more to fiery Katsuki than Deku, but as stated before, Deku puts Katsuki as model and adapts his combat style to resemble Katsuki’s. So, this overflow of energy and action is a double-edged sword which affects both Katsuki and Izuku in different ways (and is mellowed out in Izuku’s character by his other soothing characteristics , but more on that later).

Also, Red, in Asia is a lucky colour which might (or not) hint at how, despite everything Izuku got his 'lucky' chance to inherit AM's power and follow his dream of becoming a hero. Particularly, in Japan this colour is associated and denotes strength, passion, self-sacrifice. A transmission of feeling as complex and empowering as the ones Deku fills while he is living his everyday life as a future hero, summed to his nature and inherited quirk.

Red is also a magical and religious color. It symbolized super-human heroism to the Greeks and is the color of the Christian crucifixion, which might be as meaningless as other things, but in this case it might greatly relate to the type of enormous power Izuku tries to reign in, and to the self sacrificing spirit which he proves again and again.

So far, the meanings of the colours which have been associated with Deku are in line with his name, his personality and even the storyline which has been drawed out.

Among other meanings red represents power, courage, energy, passion, and creates physical effects such as enhanced metabolism, enthusiasm, higher level of energy (which comes back to the initial reasons on why Deku chooses Red as a distinct colour for himself and his shoes).

The color red is linked to the most primitive physical, emotional, and financial needs of survival and self-preservation.

Finally is also the colour of leadership, determination and courage. So in short, the colours red, where it indicates energy, action and strong emotion-filled desires and aspirations, is also weak to overbearing aspects which transform empowerment into negative traits (which is what, in the end, is represented by Bakugou). It is also strong-willed and can give confidence to those who are shy or lacking in will power (the shoes in Deku’s case).

Red is the colour of the First (or Spine) Chakra and usually allows a person to be grounded and connect to universal energies, while Green is the link between spiritual and material.

What do these two colours mean in association with each other?

Onto how these two colours are related to each other, especially considering the premises made, we see that Red (life-giving properties, trust, belonging and violence) and Green (health, eternity, youth and greed) are not only opposites, but they complete and balance each other out. Indeed, to reign over emotions and actions, to red is usually added green which indeed is a pain-relieving patch for red’s intensity (the theory of Bakugou and Deku being two sides of the same coin are thriving).

Midoriya Izuku is an intense person. His personality allows him to balance out his power with a selfless nature, and while he himself is sweet and caring, his fiery eyes (and shoes) express for him his utmost sincere feelings, which deep down are very telling. As mentioned before, Izuku responds to Monoma when he insults Bakugou and makes a jab at how actually Bakugou is the one who ultimately terminated AM, by unlocking a new dangerous and powerful quirk, which is so powerful and fiery, and red in his intensity, that they need Shinsou’s intervention to actually calm him down.

Izuku is a overly protective person: he has forgiveness as a foremost characteristic and even if he does mention how he will not forgive Shigaraki for what he has done, on second though he realises that even a ‘monster’ like Shigaraki deserves to be saved, and therefore his other nature takes over.

Therefore, the coexistence of these factors, and his personality are probably at the origin of why Midoriya has had such a drastic make-over before becoming Midoriya Izuku, and why the colours of Red and Green are fundamental in the description which lets us have a full picture of Midoriya as an individual: something who is full of hope and energy, striving to express whisk power and passion while trying to concern only himself with the danger that comes with his mission to save everyone.

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postmodernbeing · 3 years

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Shingeki no Kyojin headcanons: 104th training corps (College AU)

Hello, Postmodernbeing here. This time I wanted to write about things that I actually know, since I’m a college student and I’m studing History and Social Sciences I found myself wondering about what would the 104th training corps focus their studies on if all of them had chosen humanities as their career. I hope you find this funny and at least a bit accurate.

IMPORTANT: I do not own Shingeki no Kyojin, only these HCs are my own. // Might contain a few spoilers from the manga. // English is not my first language and I study uni at Latin America, so scientifical terms/words/concepts may vary. Anyhow, I thank you for reading and for your patience.

Eren Jaeger

He’s passionate about Military History, not to be confused with history of army. Eren’s rather focused in strategies, weapons and semiotics involved in military speech.

First started with books about great wars in modern era. The use of certain weapons took him by surprise due the technological development.

Then he took classes about discourse analysis, semiotics and such, and felt inspired by the discourse reflected in emblems, uniforms, flags, etc.

Eren doesn’t really have a preference between occidental or oriental, North or South, Modern or Ancient settings. He would simply devour all the books that deal with military strategy and warlike conflicts. Although he has more experience and information about great wars in modern era.

He’s fascinated with the inexhaustible human desire of freedom and the extent that it can reach. This fascination might not be very healthy, he concludes.

Also, finds a cruel beauty in violence when showed in freedom and ideals are protected over one’s own life. But he won’t tell his classmates or professors. He knows is a controversial opinion for he’s still aware the implications of massive conflicts and the abuse of power.

One thing led to another, Eren is now taking classes and reading about philosophy in war and anthropological perspectives about violence through time.

He’s so into social movements besides his main interest in college: “No one’s really free until all humanity is”, that’s his life motto pretty much.

Due his readings and researches he decided it was important to develop a political stance about the world’s problems. Eren strongly believes all lives worth the same, but systems and nations had imposed over others and vulnerated other human's lives.

Yes, Eren is anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist.

Mikasa Ackerman

Asian Studies Major / History Minor.

She thinks by studying these degrees, she pays honor to her heritage. Specially to her mother. Her family is the proudest for Mikasa is also the best student in her whole generation.

Mikasa received a scholarship thanks to Azumabito family, who are co-founders of an academic institution dedicated to Asian historical and cultural research. She might as well start working when she graduates.

Although she’s passionate about Japan’s history, she has written a few articles and essays about Asian Studies themselves and the importance of preserving but also divulging by means of art and sciences.

In her essays and research work, she likes to employ tools from many disciplines since she strongly believes all humanities and social sciences serve the very same purpose at scrutinize the social reality all the same. Might as well use demographics, ethnology, sociology, philosophy, anthropology, archeology, and so on. For it proves to bring light into questions that history by itself could answer unsatisfactorily (in Mikasa’s opinion).

Even her professors wonder how she manages to organize that much information and pull it off successfully. She might as well be more brilliant than a few PhD’s students.

Armin Arlert

Prehistoric studies / Archeology

He’s so into the studies about the prehistoric humans and routes of migration.

Passionate about the ocean and natural wonders since kid, Armin believed his career would be environmentalist or geoscience related.

That was the agreement he had with his grandad since middleschool, until he read Paul Rivet’s “The Origins of the American Man” book and captured him thoroughly. The way the book explained logically the diverse theories about global migration and enlisted the challenges of modern archeology -for there are numerous mysteries- simply devoured his conscience.

He knew from the books he’d read that most evidence of the first settlements are deep under dirt or far away in the ocean whose level has risen over the centuries leaving primitive camps – and answers – unreachable.

That’s the reason he is so eager to study and give his best to contribute both archeology and history disciplines. Also, he’ll forever love the ocean and nature, just leave him do all the fieldwork, please.

Jean Kirstein

History of industry / Industrial heritage / Historical materialism

Jean first started interested in capitalist industries and production development in first world countries. Kind of rejected other visions and explanations since he’d read about positivism studies.

His interest in such matters started when he was a just boy. He often found himself wondering how things were made and that question captured him ever since. As he grew up, he realized that machines and industrial processes were highly involved in the most mundane objects creation.

Nonetheless, he learnt that not always the best machinery was used, nor the best work conditions were available for mass production. From that moment he’d started to read about the First Industrial Revolution and his mind just took off with questions. Invariably, he learned about labour struggle and the transforming power due workforce.

Between his readings and university classes, he’d knew more about labour movements, unions. And in the theoretical aspect, he'd learned about historical materialism analysis.

One could say that Jean possesses a humanistic vision of the implications in mass production under capitalist system along history and nowadays.

Marco Bodt

Royalty's history / Medieval Studies

I wanted to keep his canonical fascination to royalty and the best way to do that was including Medieval Studies.

Marco would study since the fall of Roman Empire until the latest gossip of royal families all across Europe.

Might get a bit of Eurocentric with his essays but in real life discussions he’s always open to debates about decolonization. He has even read Frantz Fanon books and possesses a critical thinking about colonial countries and their relations with the so named third world.

Nevertheless, Marco finds a strange beauty in the lives of monarchs and he’s interested in study from their education, hobbies, strategies, relationships, everything.

I’d say that his favorite historical period is probably the establishment of the descendants of the barbarian peoples in the new kingdoms such as the Visigoths, Ostrogoths, Franks, Vandals, Huns, Saxons, Angles and Jutes (holy shit, they're a lot).

Because this would transcend as the beginning of his favorite matter of analysis.

Sasha Braus

History of gastronomy, development of cooking, antropology and archeological studies.

Sasha’s interested in the history that shows human development of food and cooking. She finds wonders when she inquires into cultural aspects from the first farming till modern artistic expressions that would involve food.

Such as gastronomy. But her attention got caught in literature’s food representation too, with its symbols and allegories, also in paintings that belong in still life movement, but also Sasha finds interest when food is used as rhetorical devices (for example: the apple in Adam and Eve’s myth).

She’s curious about primitive systems of irrigation, cultivation, food distribution, adaptation of wild species; as well as the domestication of animals, the diversification of the diet and its link with sedentary life, as well as the subsequent division of labor once the need for food was assured in humanity’ first cities.

Sasha’s convinced that alimentation is the pilar of civilization as we know it. For it involves cultural, artistic, economic, emotion and social aspects. Food is a microcosm of analysis of humanity.

Sasha hasn’t a favorite historical period or setting. But she definitely has a special fascination for first civilizations and their link with alimentation. Also, she likes to study the development gastronomy in occident world around different regions, social classes, and time.

Although, let’s be honest, Sasha would devour (lol, couldn’t help it) ANY book about agriculture, cattle raising, cooking or gastronomy.

Connie Springer

Micro-history / History of everyday life.

Connie loves his hometown, has a deep respect to his family and traditions. That’s why he finds himself wondering about the most ordinary events that developed in his dear Ragako.

The book “The Cheese and the Worms” by Carlo Ginzburg changed the way he used to understand history and capture him into meaningful discussions about what he learned was called micro-history.

His favorite quote from that book is: “As with language, culture offers to the individual a horizon of latent possibilities—a flexible and invisible cage in which he can exercise his own conditional liberty.”

Once deep into studying the Italian historians and their works, he decided to give it a try, and ever since he’s mesmerized with the mundane vestiges craftsmen that worked in his village left behind.

Connie’s parents are so proud of him and his achivements, but mostly because he became a passionate academic over human and simple matters, (so down to earth our big baby).

His attitude towards his essays and research works truly shows his great heart and humility. Connie is aware that academic works have no use if they are not meant to teach us about ourselves too and current times.

Empathy and hard work, that’s how one could describe the elements that integrate his recently started academic career.

Historia Reiss

Political History / Statistician

Her father’s family pressured Historia since she was a little girl into studying History just like his dad. For he’s a very famous historian that had made important researches and books about the greatest statesmen of Paradis.

She thought in numerous ways that she could sabotage her career or study any other career without her family’s consent and end with her linage of historians. But she ended up enrolling in tuition and so far, she is trying her best in her studies. Historia swears this is the right path for her.

But don’t let the appearances fool you, even thought she studies her father’s career and the very same branch of history’s discipline, she has her own critical sense and she’s so talented on her own, very meticulous with her research papers.

Definitely wants a PhD about women, power and politics. We stand a Gender Studies Queen.

Her complementary disciplines are Political Sciences. Historia also has a talent for philosophy and owns a diary with all her thoughts about them. She hopes one day she would write a book or a manifesto about an innovative methodology for research and teaching History of Politic Thinking.

Ymir

Religion’s History / Theology

Just like Historia, Ymir was pressured into studying History. And if she’s totally honest, she still has some doubts about it. Even if she couldn’t imagine herself studying anything else.

Anyways, Ymir thought that she could build her career around topics that she enjoys. So, she finally chose theology for unusual reasons.

Her classmates had grown up in religious families or had experience studying the doctrines they practiced. But she, being an agnostic, found satisfaction in unraveling belief systems in different cultures and time periods.

Albeit she studies in Paradis’ University, she currently has the opportunity of taking an academic exchange at Marley’s University. This only made Ymir more conflicted about her future, for she wants to stay (near Historia) but she’s aware that Marley would offer her more academic opportunities for her specialization.

Nowadays she’s working in some collaborative research paper with some people from Mythological Studies from the Literature department. She’s nailing it, writing some historical studies about titans in Greek mythology and its impact in shaping neoclassical poetry. Her brains ugh, love her.

Reiner Braun

Official History / Biographies of heroes and great wars.

His mother convinced him with numerous books about great national heroes, but mostly because she knew that would mean sure job to her son. All political administration in every level requires of an official chronicler.

When he started his college courses, Reiner felt motivated and he was actually convinced that he had the vocation. But the more he read the less sure he felt that the academic world was for him. He wondered if he made the right choice. If he did it for him or for his mother.

Stories and myths about heroes have always cheered him up. That gave him purpose and consoled him when feeling down. Or at least it was like that when younger. Reiner truly didn’t feel like himself when regretting his choices, but he couldn’t help it for he was changing in more than a way.

That’s why he decided to experiment with other disciplines and with time he would find joy in historical novels. He would analyze them just as good as a litterateur and research about historical context in the written story AND study the artwork’s context itself.

His favorites theorical books are: “Historical Text as Literary Artifact” by Hayden White and Michel de Certeau’ “The Writing of History”.·

Heroes stories would always accompany him, just differently now.

Bertolt Hoover

History of mentalities / Les Annales

Intimate relationships, basic habits and attitudes. / Culture

Bertie has always been a much reticent and shy guy. As he grew up, he consolidated his sullen personality, but maintained a friendly attitude towards anyone who needed him. That’s why he thought that the priority in his studies was to be at the service of his classmates.

So, although he was passionate about research and was a fan of the French Les Annales current, he considered his mission to be in the Archive. As a cataloger, organizer and curator of ancient documents.

But the ways of History are always mysterious, and Doctor Magath showed him that other way of being was possible. Before Bertolt picked his specialty, he met Theo Magath, a professor who recently had finished writing a book: “The Idea of Death in Liberio’s Ghetto in Marley During its War Against Eldia (Paradis)” (long-ass titles are historians specialty btw). After Magath ended his book’ presentation, Bertolt reached him. They talked for hours and finally, he felt inspired into pursuing his true passion. Magath gifted him “The Historian’s Craft” by Marc Bloch as a way to reminding him his way.

By the time Bertolt took History of Mentalities as optional class, he already had some basic notions about Les Annales, Lucien Febvre, Marc Bloch, Fernand Braudel, Jacques Le Goff and such.

Being the gentle giant he is, Bertolt finds joy in reading about different lifestyles in diverse cultures. He constantly wonders about the origin of social constructs and the way they shape thinking as much as identity.

This boy is a wonder, he might not be the best in oral presentations or extracurricular activities but sure as hell he’ll graduate with honors.

Annie Leonhart

Oral history, about institutions. Particularly, police and justice system in early XXs.

Albeit she got into the same University than Bertolt and Reiner, even shared classes and hopes, Annie regularly felt disconnected from her studies. With time she realized it wasn't due her career itself but rather because of the currents that her professors had suggested her taking. Until now.

Talking with Hitch and Marlow about their doubts concerning subjects and departments it came up the topics of history and present time but also oral history. She’d never heard something like that before. So, that very same week, Annie started searching for information about that.

She ended up with more questions: is it all of this just academic journalism? Or maybe sociology? When we can talk about regular history and when it starts being present time? If she introduces interviews due oral history, then that makes it an interdisciplinary work? Which are the best systems for analyzing data? Definitely, she’ll need help from anthropology and sociology departments if she wants to keep going.

Contrary to her initial prognostic, philosophy and history of historic writing became her new allies, and the text “Le temps présent et l'historiographie contemporaine” (Present Time and Contemporary Historiography) by Bédarida among others, provided Annie another perspective.

Regarding her favorite topics, she wouldn’t say that she selected them freely. They were just practical preferences. For institutions own extensive archives and numerous functionaries. One way or another, she ended up tangled in judicial system and police issues.

With new tools and object for studying, one could find Annie having a blast as detective too. Even if her academic essays focus on institutions’ history and configuration, she’s also working in corruption and more. She doesn’t do it because she believes it’s the right thing, but besides, the thrill of the tea is spicy. Although she won’t admit it.

#shingeki no kyojin #attack on titan #aot headcanons #snk headcanons #eren jaeger #mikasa ackerman #armin arlert #jean kirstein #marco bodt #sasha braus #connie springer #historia reiss #ymir #reiner braun #bertolt hoover #annie leonhart #modern au #college au

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fatehbaz · 4 years

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Sorry. This might be annoying and excessively long. Among people interested in psychogeography, ecology, folklore, bioregionalism, urban geography (and Empire, hegemony, anti-imperialism, to a lesser extent, I guess?) there is a quote that gets circulated from time to time. I’ve seen the quote in academic articles, sure, but also on the W0rdpress blogs of, like, birders, hikers, gardeners, “bioregional animists,” and “woods aesthetic” fans. But why do both academic authors and popular/mainstream writers and bloggers and such consistently remove the end of this sentence from Michel de Certeau’s memorable statement: “There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can “invoke” or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in – and this inverts the schema of the panopticon.”

Gonna revel in the wonders of the garden, the forest, the landscape, the other-than-human lifeforms, and yet not willing to explicitly address the vulnerability, the cascading extinction, the tightening noose of imperial hegemony and carceral systems threatening it all, landscapes, lives, entire worlds? What de Certeau is referring to here is the way that imperial/dominant power structures (European modernity, Empire) try to subdue, erase, destroy smaller, alternate, and/or non-Western cosmologies, to make it seem like Empire is the only possible world that can be constructed. And so landscapes become sanitized, especially in cities, and de Certeau says that such sanitized places are “uninhabitable” because they are so cold, because Empire tries to standardize experience, rather than allowing localized connections tor regional landscape. But the alternative worldviews, the histories, have not been fully erased, and exist in the cracks and crevices of modernity, and so there are “ghosts” of alternative worlds which live on. And it is the remnants of other worlds, or the glimpses of other creatures (animals/plants/etc.) or other surviving worldviews (graffiti in the subway, which rejects order and control), or the hopes of possible better future worlds, crevices where the “failures” of modernity can be glimpsed, which make a place habitable. “Haunted geographies.”

Here’s a sentence fragment from a different author, writing about de Certeau:

“exotification and suppression, under a cloak of celebration”

This kinda thing.

This fragment comes from a criticism of early-20th-century Euro-American academia’s so-called “folklore studies” but I think it also describes much 21st-century academic interest in “ecological knowledge” and non-Western cultures. I have a feeling that this behavior is similar to what contemporary upper class careerist-academics in academic anthropology departments and those “studying the utility of traditional ecological knowledge” are doing when they superficially throw around words like “decolonial” or “Haraway’s Chthuluscene” in their article abstract for Cool Points without actually having given much through to the way they and their sponsoring institution, in their thirst for prestige or good optics or whatever, are in fact continuing to perpetuate dispossession and appropriation of Indigenous/non-Western knowledge. And on some level, it is deliberate and calculated, though not always a conscious act on the individual author/researcher’s part. Intentional power consolidation masked as passive chauvinism masked as benevolent paternalistic concern for “primitive peoples” masked as genuine respect. What’s happening is a recuperation, the subsuming of alternative cosmologies and ways of being. Hypothetical Nat/Geo article, variations of which you’ve probably seen before: “How can we utilize Indigenous knowledge? Can traditional knowledge help us battle climate change?” Empire, those in power, hegemonic institutions colonizing knowledge, thought, cosmology.

Plenty has been written, especially in recent years, of a “plurality/pluriverse of worlds in contrast to one imperial worldview/cosmology” and also the paternalistic attitudes of Euro-American anthropologists, but the mid-century work of Michel de Certeau, in my opinion, anticipated a lot of this disk horse. Here’s the fuller quote:

-----------------------

“In recent years, especially since 1960, scholarship in the service of popular culture has been of Marxist inspiration, or at least ‘populist’ in spirit,” de Certeau, Dominique Julia and Jacque Revel wrote in a 1980 essay, “but does the scientific operation it undertakes obey different laws than it did in the past? On the contrary, it seems to be dominated by the mechanisms of age-old excommunications…to conceal what it claims to show” (de Certeau 1986, 121). This opening statement encapsulates much of de Certeau’s thinking about the history of folklore studies. Tracing its development in successive stages from the late eighteenth century to the “heyday of folklore” in France’s Third Republic (1870-1940), the authors argue that the eighteenth century aristocratic vogue for “the popular” concealed a powerful movement toward the domination of the peasantry. This movement involved both exotification and suppression, under a cloak of celebration.“ The idealization of the “popular,” as they put it, “is made all the easier if it takes the form of a monologue. The people may not speak, but they can sing...The intent [of folklorists] is both to collect…and to reduce (de Certeau 1986, 122).[...] The governing ideologies driving the emergence of this obsession with the folk were not static, however, and therefore, in order to understand the development of the politics of culture in folklore studies, scholars must examine, at each point, its “subjacent postulates” (de Certeau 1986, 123). For instance, following the domination imbricated with the origins of folklore studies in the 18th century, by the mid-nineteenth century, the authors describe folklore as taking on a paternalist role vis-a-vis its subject. The collection of folklore by this time, embodied especially in the works of Charles Nisard (1808-1890), is not just a chronicle of its elimination by the elite, but a protective function executed by the elite on behalf of the incompetent peasant. In this view, de Certeau and his colleagues observe, “the people are children whose original purity it is befitting to preserve by guarding them against evil readings” (de Certeau 1986, 124, original emphasis). [...] This, then, is the basic outline of de Certeau’s historical critique of both the conceptualization of folklore and the discipline of folklore studies, as well as the core of his critique of cultural studies in the late 20th century. Interestingly, however, it is also the core of his larger understanding of the workings of modernity.

From: Anthony Bak Buccitelli. “Hybrid Tactics and Locative Legends: Re-reading de Certeau for the Future of Folkloristics.” Cultural Analysis, Volume 15.1. 2016.

--------------------------------

So there is a popular quote from Michel de Certeau (French interdisciplinary scholar, 1925-1986), which seems to have been yet more popular since, like:

(1) 2010-ish with elevation of Mark Fisher’s work; “object-oriented ontology”; “dark ecology”; apparent academic elevation of ontological turn in anthropology; and the white-washed Euro-American academic language of traditional ecological knowledge, “decolonization,” etc.,

And also since (2) 2014/2015 in “popular” media, with apparent mainstream-ing or “revival” of folk horror, alongside elevation of eco-horror, Anthropocene disk horse, etc.

(In my anecdotal experience, at least, reading about geography, folklore, psychogeography, etc. in online spaces from M.S.N chatroom days onwards.)

I’m of course very wary of de Certeau’s interest in and celebration of Freud (come on, bro) and also the implications of de Certeau’s Jesuit background and early interest in missionary stuff (gross). But de Certeau did write some thoughtful and nicely-phrased stuff (in my opinion) about the importance of subverting imperialist/hegemonic cosmologies; how Euro-American academic institutionalized knowledge reinforces power; imperative for combating hegemony/carceral thinking by connecting with landscape; the “memory” of places; the “hidden” histories of landscapes, etc. And he wrote this decades before academics started stealing from Indigenous people of Latin America and getting into pluriverse stuff.

Anyway, one quote in particular seems most popular. but almost every single instance where i’ve ever seen this quote shared, it always cuts out the last few words of the statement. The quote is from what might be his most widely-read work, the “Walking in the City” chapter of his 1984 book The Practice of Everyday Life. (it’s a pretty brief chapter which is available for free online; might take 30 minutes to read, if you’re interested.) The quote as translated by Steven Rendall: “There is no place that is not haunted by many different spirits hidden there in silence, spirits one can “invoke” or not. Haunted places are the only ones people can live in – and this inverts the schema of the panopticon.”

The “inversion of the panopticon” portion is almost always left out of the quote. even in academic writing or in the writing/blogs/whatever of people who otherwise seem like they would be down with anti-imperialism or something.

So, it comes across to me as if contemporary (2005-2020) academics and activists interested in, like, folklore or local horticulture or psychogeography will like ... take the “cute” fragments of these excerpts, but don’t want to “stir the pot” by presenting these writings in their fuller context, a fuller context which calls-out knowledge appropriation and explicitly trash-talks Empire.

And de Certeau’s not just writing about folklore or geography. He’s writing about taking action, about practicing alternative ways to relate to landscape in direct contrast to imperial cosmologies, academic/institutionalized/gatekept knowledge, and carceral thinking. (He’s famous for this; he emphasized “tactics” and “action.”)

So this guy is, of course, human, and had disagreeable and/or outright problematique associations. You can argue with his writing extensively. his publications are a mix of great, cool, iffy, “meh” and “bad take bruh.” But de Certeau was ahead of the curve in anticipating the way ambitious US academics would see “the decolonial turn” happening in academic anthropology in the 1990s/2000s and then weaponize it in a way that preserved their power dynamic and institutional power while still paying lip-service to “decolonization.”

But besides dunking on the imperialist foundations of Western institutionalized knowledge systems and the cunning employment of geographic re-worlding and re-naming in creating propaganda and imperial cosmology, and besides being ahead of the curve in anticipating re-enchantment trends and folk horror ... One thing I like about de Certeau’s writing is the emphasis on action, practice, and doing things to counter dominant/powerful cosmology’s attempt to destroy folk/non-Western worldview. Encouraging something like:

Take action. Books are cool, but books are not a substitute for action. Girl, you wanna study landscape, place-based identity, folklore, and how to escape the panopticon? Gotta put the theory texts down occasionally. Please go walk around in the forest; if you’re in the major city, don’t despair, just look at the moss growing in crevices betwixt the cobblestones. Imagine the ghosts, the histories, the stories, who died, what was lost, what’s come before. Power is trying to subsume all, but Empire gets anxious and flails because they know that there are gaps in their cosmology, cracks and breakages where other worlds seep through or can be glimpsed, retrieved, renewed. They know their cosmology can’t account for the diversity of life, the plurality of experience. There is not one world, but many. Find the crevices, the cracks, in the dominant power structures, and break them further. You can help to escape the tightening noose, the planetary-scale plantation, by using your imagination, cooking a meal, taking a walk.

#whatever #sorry for all this

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bluewatsons · 4 years

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Aisling McCrea, A message to an unknown reader…, Current Affairs (July 30, 2019)

I want you to picture the following scenario: You are an archaeologist, and you are digging at a site about 125 miles east of Karachi, Pakistan. A lot of the terrain in Pakistan is mountainous, difficult to inhabit, but not the part of the land we’re talking about. Check a satellite image of the region on Google Maps, if you’ve got a phone or a computer nearby: You are in that rich green ribbon of land that snakes down through the middle of the country. This is the Indus river basin, a place that has fed and raised cultures for thousands of years. Humans have wandered everywhere, but it was places like this, with running water and fertile soil, that first lured us into the role of settler. It was places like this where the combination of bountiful resources and our growing ingenuity first allowed us to develop systemic methods of agriculture, build cities, and begin our struggle to achieve things beyond mere survival, or so it is said. Because of this, river basins are nicknamed “the cradle of civilization.” Civilization is what we call it when humans begin to think of themselves not as dependents of their environment, but as masters.

From the distance of the satellite, note that you cannot see Pakistan’s cities or factories, or any sign of activity from the 200 million people living within the lines we call its borders. All that stands out to your eye is that luscious green ribbon, swirling from the mountains to the sea, a gift from God or the earth or whomever you believe to be the benefactor. You are an archaeologist, and this is where you are digging. The site you are excavating was only recently discovered, a chance find by a construction crew. There are many sites in the region, all dating back to the Bronze Age, but we cannot discern the exact relationship between the settlements we’ve found, whether they considered themselves part of the same culture or were sworn enemies; part of the reason we do not know this is we cannot read their writing. Therefore, what you find in your excavation might be similar to other settlements in the region—simply an extension of the discoveries made before—or you might find something different. You are full of human curiosity, and ambition. You are hoping to find something different.

Here in the cradle of civilization, you find something buried. It is a bronze box covered in engravings, clearly designed by a skilled hand, and since you found it at the center of what appeared to be the site’s biggest temple, you judge it to be of some importance. You know the field well, and you know that this is unlike anything found before, and that excites you. The engraving contains a lot of symbols—part of the script no-one can read, it tells you nothing—and under the symbols, artfully etched, is the unmistakable image of a human skull.

For thousands of years and across continents, skulls have been used to signify danger. But history is long and full of turns, and even this most obvious and literal symbol could signify a multitude of things. You trace the skull with your finger, trying to connect with the intent of its long-dead creator. It seems designed to look intimidating, but when you first brushed the dirt from the surface and saw the graven image, you didn’t think for one second about danger—in fact, the first thing it reminded you of was the skulls on your brother’s goofy band shirts. (It wouldn’t make sense to think of danger. Whatever once threatened here is quiet. There is no danger here.) What could this skull have meant, you wonder, to the people who lived here? What’s the connection to the building, or the contents of the box? You think of human sacrifices, burial places, commemorations of wars.

Then you think of your career. You open the box.

In the 1960s, the U.S. Department of Energy began wondering what on earth it was going to do with all its nuclear waste. This question had never been highly prioritized before; in the years following World War II, the prevailing attitudes towards nuclear energy had run the gamut between sunny optimism and mortal fear, powerful emotions which leave little space for mundane concerns about the high-tech equivalent of garbage disposal. After research into nuclear fission had successfully served its first purpose—vaporizing and mutilating countless Japanese civilians—the U.S. government had been enthusiastic about the many potential uses of its superhuman creation, and invested heavily both in nuclear weapons and nuclear energy production for civilian use. It was predicted that nuclear power could do everything, from keeping the lights on to preserving food. A nation drunk on the promises of the atom had little interest in thinking about the hangover.

By the 1960s, however, the novelty of the so-called “atomic age” was starting to wear off, and the government realized it had a problem on its hands. The production of nuclear energy was creating large amounts of radioactive waste, which could not be converted into safe material, and which would remain dangerous to human beings for at least 10,000 years. (10,000 years is a conservative estimate. Many scientists have suggested that number should have one or two more zeroes on the end.) The waste was being kept in temporary storage facilities dotted around the country, and there was no obvious place where it could be safely deposited and sealed away. And even if a permanent place could be found, there was the question of how to keep people away from it.

The government’s concern was not so much for its contemporary citizens, who had been bombarded with enough Cold War propaganda to understand the threat of nuclear radiation. If a 20th-century American were to somehow get lost on their way home from the drive-in theater and stumble into a radioactive waste disposal site, all it would take to warn them off was a sign bearing the word “danger” and the image of the trefoil. (The trefoil is the internationally-recognized symbol for radiation, usually black on a yellow background, a circle surrounded by three blades. You knew the image before you knew the word.) Rather, the government’s concern was for the people who would come later. For comparison, the entire concept of complex human civilization, at least as we tend to define it, is about 5,000 years old. Now we had created something that would curse us for at least twice as long as that, maybe many times longer, and we had to work out not only how to bury it, but to protect whoever might disturb its burial place.

While Americans fretted over whether their grandchildren would grow up speaking English or Russian, the Department of Energy recognized that whoever came across their disposal site might be as distant to both those languages as we are to the dead scripts of the Indus valley. It was possible that they might not know written language at all. Perhaps they would have progressed so far beyond writing that the concept would be unthinkably primitive to them. Perhaps the opposite would happen, and they wouldn’t know anything of writing because the sum of human knowledge was lost to them in some catastrophic event—or even deliberately discarded, after the sum of human knowledge was examined and found, on the whole, not to have done us any good. No matter how desperately we wish to communicate with future peoples, there is no way to guarantee the sanctity of the written word, and it is considered likely that any written warning will be meaningless to them.

Communication through images seems an obvious choice—that’s the option we usually go for when we’re facing a language barrier—until you consider that the reader might have no concept of radiation. Right now the meaning of the trefoil is recognized across nations and languages, but that meaning is just an arbitrary one that we’ve constructed for ourselves, as fragile and temporally dependent as nations and languages themselves. To us, the sight of the trefoil signifies generations of scientific progress, terror, the future, something to be respected; an invisible energy that is sometimes used to kill hostile growths in our bodies, and in other cases will make them grow. None of that knowledge is communicated through the image. To our unknown recipient, it’s just a black circle and three blades. If you forget what it means to you, it could almost be a flower.

If one were looking for a hint at how these sites might be treated by our distant descendants, one might find it in the deserts of Egypt. Of all the myriad civilizations that ever lived and died in the “non-Western” world, Ancient Egypt is the only one most Westerners know much about, and there are two obvious reasons for this. First, Egypt’s exoticism and long history was a great source of fascination for the Greeks and the Romans—remember that the Great Sphinx was older to Caesar than Caesar is to us—and so it has somehow been pulled into Western canon, despite its location right in the middle of the region we are supposed to think of as the West’s eternal enemy. (This view is incorrect for many reasons, not least because nothing human is eternal.) Second, they left us the pyramids. The pyramids of Giza are not the world’s largest pyramids, nor the oldest, but for the last 4,500 years their image has captivated humanity across millennia and continents like nothing else on the planet. We cannot know the intent of the pharaohs, but one might guess they wanted to be buried somewhere that would assure they would always be remembered; by imprinting their deaths physically and unforgettably on the landscape, they were sending a message to future generations.

However, while the pyramids are still here, the meaning of the message is forgotten. Most people couldn’t tell you much about any individual pharaoh buried there. Almost no-one still believes that the pharaohs were gods. Some will want to tell you their own interpretation of the intended meaning or purpose of the buildings, or their theories about the culture in general; what was once a tomb for the world’s most influential figures is now reduced to a sort of personal amusement for amateur detectives. The burial chambers have been looted countless times. We unsealed the coffins and desecrated the dead, shipping them out to museums on new landmasses and displaying their bodies as curiosities, and no rumors of a curse could slake our thirst for trophies.

Very occasionally, we have a moment of vulnerability, of self-reflection. When it was announced last year that a new sarcophagus had been uncovered, and that it was filled with a mysterious red liquid, many responded to the news with expressions of dread. Was it because we still had a little lingering respect for a culture that had achieved so much, a culture that had not quite revealed all its mysteries to us, and its production of an as-yet unknown substance filled us with awe? Were we afraid that our knowledge of science had missed something old, and abhorrent, something lurking under the sands waiting to be set free? The moment didn’t last long. A representative of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities pointed out the liquid was most likely just sewage, and our discomfort promptly evaporated. Someone even started a petition demanding people be allowed to drink the “sarcophagus juice” so that they could “assume its powers.” A joke, of course, but jokes often contain a grain of truth. Across the entirety of our history as builders of civilizations, all our sins and achievements have stemmed from our metaphorical urge to drink the sarcophagus juice: to salivate at the promise of new knowledge and power, to disturb and break open anything that is unknown, to ransack the earth and, giving no thought to the consequences, consume whatever we find there. ***

By 1980, “atomic optimism” was dead, or at least dormant, in the United States. Throughout the 1970s, the anti-nuclear movement had gained momentum, along with the rest of the counterculture. A partial meltdown had just occurred at the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, stoking further panic about the dangers of radiation. There was still no confirmed plan to build a permanent waste disposal site.

The Department of Energy knew it was time to face some difficult questions. They assembled a team of experts from fields as diverse as environmental science, nuclear engineering, waste management, semiotics, linguistics, behavioral psychology and anthropology. They called it the Human Interference Task Force, and their goal was to develop a strategy to prevent any future nuclear waste depository from being disturbed by future generations. Although there was technology available to design a well-protected depository, the Task Force knew that there was little hope of building something totally indestructible. They could try and discourage interference with the depository by drawing on the concept of “hostile architecture”—designing a site that was deliberately difficult and uncomfortable to navigate—but a species that insisted on going to the Moon was unlikely to be deterred by a few spikes or a maze. Therefore, the main focus of the Task Force was not fortification, but communication. We could not keep people out by force; we could only plead.

In 1982, the German Journal of Semiotics (Zeitschrift für Semiotik) posed the depository problem to its readers, who responded with admirable, if slightly over-optimistic levels of imagination. One suggested solution was the development of a new breed of domestic cats, whose fur would change color in reaction to high levels of radioactivity. The world’s governments could then promote the development of art and literature in which cats changing color were an oft-repeated symbol for danger; thus, when future generations came across depository sites and tried to settle there, their cats would change color and they would become frightened and leave. Another suggestion was an “atomic priesthood,” a group of people who vowed to live near the sites, and passed on the secrets of radiation from generation to generation, in mythologized and ritualized form if need be. A theme that crops up again and again with the depository problem is the need for the message to be distilled into something simple and accessible: Call it universal, if you like, or primitive if you prefer.

Stanisław Lem, one of the world’s foremost science fiction authors, proposed that botanists use genetic modification to encode information about nuclear waste into the DNA of flowers, which could be planted and nurtured near the site. Although he admitted it was risky to assume future peoples would know how to decode the DNA, there was a sort of logic to it. To take plants that grew spontaneously and manipulate them to our liking, breeding and growing them at our convenience so we could propagate our own species was, after all, civilization’s first trick. Perhaps it had some lasting power.

The Human Interference Task Force began to draw up designs. A multiplicity of images, symbols and words were proposed as part of the initial blueprints for the depository site, with the Task Force noting that any method of inscribing the messages at the site would have to outlast theft, weathering, and changes in climate. Because we could not predict any future civilizations’ level of knowledge, the danger would have to be communicated in a way that was comprehensible to any type of reader. There could be some complex, technical messages at the site, but in case they couldn’t be understood, there needed to be some simpler messages too, and repeated in a number of ways so the meaning was less likely to be misinterpreted.

A 1993 report by Sandia National Laboratories—charged by the Department of Energy with the task of researching nuclear safety—took this concept further, and proposed some specific messages that might work. Some of the images might include: A periodic table. A world map of all known waste sites. A diagram showing the precession of stars in the sky over tens of thousands of years, from which readers might calculate the date the depository was built. (The places where we build depositories tend to be far from human life, and therefore relatively free from air pollution; if you want a perfect view of the night sky, go to a nuclear silo and look up.) There was some measure of disagreement on what type of pictographs to use. Some researchers wanted to focus on more functional pictographs, while others gave more prominence to “human facial expressions (horror and sickness).” The messages would begin from the outside, becoming more complex as one got closer and closer to the center. The Sandia report gives a suggestion for one of the more complex written warnings at a location close to the center. It was more technical in substance, though still simple in style:

“This place is a burial place for radioactive wastes. We believe this place is not dangerous IF IT IS LEFT ALONE! We are going to tell you what lies underground, why you should not disturb this place, and what may happen if you do. By giving you this information, we want you to protect yourselves and future generations from the dangers of this waste. The waste is buried __ kilometers down in a salt layer. Salt was chosen because there is very little water in it…We found out that the worst things happen when people disturb the site. For example, drilling or digging through the site could connect the salt water below the radioactive waste with the water above the waste or with the surface…” The message goes on at some length, giving explanations as to the chemistry involved, the nature of illnesses caused by radiation, and the structure of the building. The writing would be inscribed on the wall, complete with instructional pictures. (Today, this scenario might remind one of an escape room or a puzzle in a videogame, amusing simulations of mortal danger made real.)

The writing would not be enough, though. The report also noted that the site would need to convey in its physical form a feeling, something that would touch the basest instincts of a living being. The authors noted in words, as best they could, what that feeling was:

“ This place is not a place of honor… no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here… nothing valued is here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.

The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours. The danger is to the body, and it can kill.

This place is a message… and part of a system of messages …pay attention to it!

Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture.”

At the end of the Sandia report, the writers quote a poem. If you’re into poetry, you might be able to guess what it is, and maybe the lines have already whispered through your mind as you’ve been reading this article.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert… near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal these words appear:

‘My name is Ozymandias, king of kings;

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias by Percy Shelley was published on 11 January 1818, at the height of what was called “Egyptomania,” the burning obsession of Western aristocrats with finding and swallowing up all the treasures of the Nile. Shelley might have been inspired by the romance of the desert for his setting, but the underlying message of his poem—even the greatest empires fall and are forgotten—can also read as a warning to his own nation’s empire, to the new wave of philosophers and scientists, to anyone so caught up in the heady power of 19th-century Britain that they forgot they were only mortal. Just 10 days before the poem was published, his wife, Mary Shelley, published a work of her own, a novel about a scientist who creates a monster he cannot control.

Not many paid attention to the warnings. The allure of power—power from knowledge, from technology, from resources, from land—dominated the mindset of those who ran empires, and those who ran empires dominated the world.

The same year Frankenstein and Ozymandias were published, Egypt conquered the Arabian Peninsula. This was a critical victory, because it put the holy cities of Mecca and Medina back under the control of the Ottoman Empire, the great power to which Egypt was subordinate. The Empire had held the holy cities for centuries, yet inexplicably, for the previous 13 years, Mecca and Medina had been out of their grasp, having fallen into the hands of a small upstart tribe with their own version of Islam—an extremely strict and literalist doctrine that seemed totally at odds with the rest of the world’s tendency towards modernization. But the recapturing of the cities meant balance was restored to the world, after this strange temporary interlude. The upstart tribe with its fundamentalist religion was brutally crushed, its leaders executed, and all was in its rightful place. If one were to go back in time to 1818, and ask a well-read man about the civilizational struggles in Arabia, it is likely he would have thought a lot about the strong, old, Western-facing Ottoman Empire—which had changed the shape of the world and produced so much of interest—and very little, if at all, about a defeated family called the House of Saud.

But the path of human history isn’t a straight line, and we can’t see what lies ahead of us. 100 years later, in 1918, the world’s most brutal war ended and the Ottoman Empire turned to dust, leaving the House of Saud space to consolidate their power. In 1932 the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was born. One of the king’s first moves was to invite American geologists, engineers, and businessmen to plunge through the sand and drill holes into the earth, suspecting that the ground beneath their feet was hiding black and glistening treasure that could make them rich.

In 1938, the Americans found what they were looking for, and the House of Saud turned from an upstart tribe to transformers of the desert, with the wealth and power to do anything they wished. Western cities grew upwards and outwards, feeding off the oil under the surface of Saudi land. In 1984, an exiled Saudi national named Abdul Rahman Munif wrote a novel about the oil boom called Cities of Salt, and when asked the meaning of the name, explained that one day the glimmering Saudi cities would dissolve and be forgotten, like salt in water. All this happened within a fraction of human history, and the finest minds of the early 19th-century could never have foreseen it—just as they couldn’t have foreseen how our lust for oil would cause the temperatures to rise.

The Department of Energy still does not have a permanent depository site, but it’s had a location picked out since the 1980s: Yucca Mountain, Nevada, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas. Yucca Mountain is just by the Nevada Test Site, where nuclear weapons have been tested off-and-on since 1951 (the last test was in 2012). In this desert, workers would build mock neighborhoods of picture-perfect brick houses, sit families of mannequins at the dinner table, and see what remained of them after the mushroom cloud had dispersed. (No highly esteemed deed is commemorated here. What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us.) The location was partly chosen because almost no one lives there now, though remnants of the gold and silver mining industries have left the sands strewn with ghost towns. A lot of the names around here tell stories: Gold Center, Eureka, Saline, Chloride City, Hells Gate. Occasionally, you’ll see an indigenous name.

The Sandia report said the depository should send the message: We considered ourselves to be a powerful culture. This raises the question of who the “we” is supposed to be. It could mean the contemporary world in general, if we wanted to label ourselves one culture (we don’t know how apparent any differences would be to future readers between the United States and anywhere else.) Or it could mean the United States government. But there’s another “we” with a claim to this land. As far as the Western Shoshone people are concerned, Yucca Mountain doesn’t even belong to the federal government. The government claims to have legally purchased the land during the Civil War, when they needed it to acquire gold. The Western Shoshone dispute that the government has rights to the land, since the government only made a fraction of promised payment after it was appropriated. (This is not a place of honor.) Shoshone activists, as well as other peoples indigenous to the area, express their outrage both at the theft of their land and the polluting of the environment, but it does little good.

At any given point in time, some civilizations have power, and some do not. At the moment, the United States has power and the Shoshone do not, because in the European settlers’ quest to take the land, they had killed the majority of the people who were already there, wiping entire societies off the map as they went, whether intentionally by murder and cruelty, or unintentionally, by disease. (The danger is to the body, and it can kill.)

The Yucca Mountain plan is currently at a standstill, lacking in funding and lurking low on the priorities list, and for the moment, the permanent site shows no signs of being built. In its place, waste is temporarily being stored at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico, which one day might become the permanent site. If the site there is developed for permanent storage, its written warnings are to be in seven languages: the six official languages of the UN, and Navajo. One might interpret this as the federal government throwing a tiny token to the people it knows it has mistreated. Or one might consider it a recognition of the impossibility of predicting history’s twists and turns: We have no idea who might be here 10,000 years from now, and who might not.

When reading through the Human Interference Task Force and WIPP documents—after overcoming the initial wave of eldritch horror brought on by the sight of chapter headings like “Menacing Earthworks” and “Forbidding Blocks”— one starts to get the sense that something is unusual about these reports. For starters, the sheer level of vision on display is quite remarkable, making them at times seem more like science fiction novels than a government report. What’s more, from the perspective of our era—when the humanities and social sciences are frequently defunded, dismissed, and derided—it’s surprising to see an unquestioned faith in the essential relationship between “hard” science and social science. The U.S. Department of Energy understood that the nuclear waste disposal problem could not be solved by technological innovation alone; no alloy or neat little locking mechanism would save us from our future selves. Only by examining human nature, and allowing ourselves to conceive of a world beyond all contemporary understanding, could we attempt to protect the planet from the magnitude of what we’d done to it.

Perhaps, damaging though it was in terms of its siege mentality, there was something in the Cold War mindset that allowed the U.S. researchers to think in such epochal terms. The older researchers on the initial project would have grown up in the midst of the Second World War, the near-apocalyptic battle between inextricably opposed ideologies—fascism, communism, liberal democracy—that had all still been in their cradle just a century before, and had then grown into giants, who in their battles spilled blood into the earth and left cities in shreds. The younger researchers were bathed in the spirit of the Cold War, a Manichean atmosphere wherein the fate of the earth depended on the outcome of a constant struggle between two opposing forces, and where children learned that at the press of a button in Moscow, they might one day simply evaporate. This ingrained knowledge of the knife-edge fragility of civilization, a sense of an America proud and strong and wealthy and yet always teetering at the edge of a precipice, might have instilled in those researchers a quiet understanding that they, their hometown, their country, their planet was a place where all could be annihilated. Perhaps this enabled them to look calmly in the face of their own civilization’s destruction, and accept their obligation to do whatever they could for those who came next.

After the early ’90s, reports continued to come out, occasionally, but there were no big breakthroughs in the communication side of things, or any more radical approaches to the problem. This period, after the fall of the Soviet Union, is what Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history”: the epic battles between visions for humanity’s future were done, the West had won, we were all to put our imaginations away in safety deposit boxes and get to focusing on technocratic tweaks and institutional tune-ups for the rest of time. It is remarkable to note the difference in attitude toward the nuclear crisis in the Cold War, and the climate crisis today. Moderate proposals for a Green New Deal are hand-waved away as “unrealistic”; in response to suggestions of a move to renewable energy, sensible people shake their heads and point to their graphs of electricity prices, jobs, and GDP, graphs that stretch back 20 or 30 years, which is as far back as anyone can remember. Quietly, without fuss, long-term survival slips further and further down the priorities list.

The United States understands danger in the form of external threats, but not the danger within itself: the desire of civilizations to consume the land they perch on, to draw resources out from the ground and use them all up, to create great pestilences as a byproduct of its inventions, and realize (too late) the ramifications of what’s been done. There is something different between the inventive, enthusiastic way the U.S. Department of Energy reacted to the nuclear waste problem in the 1980s, and the timid, bounded way it reacts to climate change now. We have lost the ability to imagine the future. Our nuclear waste sits in silos, waiting for a home; the question of what to do with them is in stasis. The Department of Energy has ensured that on a technical level, when they are eventually buried, they will survive any war or terrorist attack within the short-term—which, no matter how painful they might be to us, are bound to be mere scratches on the surface of the earth’s history. Wherever their resting place—as the situation stands, it will be somewhere quiet in the Southwestern deserts—when they are buried we will probably hear about them on the news, and there may be a wave of excitement, and then the dirt will be shoveled over them, and we’ll forget. A thousand crises will come and pass. Nations will be formed and abandoned, the sea will sweep in, the deserts will get hotter, the riverbeds will dry up. To think about a time 10,000 years from now is frightening, and bleak, knowing what we know about the current trends, but a stretch of time that long has room for faith as well as despair. Hopefully humanity will save itself, somehow; we will turn our desire to shape the earth to a good purpose, and build a new way of existing on the land, something none of us can predict. We can only pray that they will not be as greedy as us. We can only hope they hear our message.

Somewhere beyond any distance we can picture, an archaeologist is digging. The sand stretches all around him, to all horizons. He has hit stone, a monument to something, and after some time, it is revealed in its entirety. It it etched all over with lines of different shapes, that he cannot understand, but he understands enough to realize this was once a special place. To either side of the words, he recognizes drawings of human faces: one has a mouth open in terror, the other twisted in pain. This could be a memorial to some horrific event, or it could be a curse meant to punish unwanted intruders. Intruders were not well-liked by these people, or so the archaeologist has read, though he finds it difficult to understand their concepts of property and trespass.

Exhausted from digging, he sits at the foot of the monument, and he spends a moment taking in its magnificence, trying to connect with its makers. At the top of the monolith is a mysterious symbol—a circle, surrounded by three blades. The archaeologist smiles. He has never seen it before, but it fills him with a sense of serenity. It was a plant that grew in their time, perhaps, or the insignia of a nation, or a representation of a god. Whatever it was, it’s long gone now, but in any case it’s pretty. Like a child, he traces the trefoil in the sand, digging his thumb into the earth to make the center, dragging his fingers outwards one, two, three times. The ground moves easily for him, giving way to his desire to destroy the surface and create something new. He looks down at the trefoil he has drawn, his little sign that he has been here. He is just the latest in an immeasurable line of human beings who desire to put some sort of mark on the earth.

He is proud of his creation, but he forgets that it is drawn in sand. It’s visible only for a minute, before the winds blow it away.

#nuclear semiotics #The Future #disaster #communication #linguistics #stories

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qedavathegrey · 5 years

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Untangling The Witch

I have seen things and I have things to say. It’s generally not my policy to be inflammatory (even if doing so is justified), because this is the internet and I know some of y’all don’t listen, can’t read, and love to argue, but on this day I’m gonna say my piece. If you’re trying to start anything but constructive discussion, know that you are not worth my time, I’m am the manager and the customer is not always right. That being said — and in keeping with the (loose) topic of this blog — we need to talk about witchcraft, namely the term “witch” and its definition. That’s where we’re starting anyway. I’ll add that I’m not a scholar of witchcraft specifically (though I do have an applicable degree), I’m not infallible nor do I claim to be. But I do know some things. I’ve been around the proverbial block. And I’m familiar with some of modern witchcraft’s confusing nature. We’re not going to touch on all of that (it would merit a class, this is only a lesson), but we’re gonna broach the surface.

Let’s start with The Witch, uppercase.

Who is The Witch, you ask?

Historically and cross-culturally, The Witch is a scapegoat: the one who sows discord and misfortune. Your cows mysteriously stop producing milk, your garden withers and dies, your children fall ill with fever or seizures? That’s The Witch, up to their old tricks. In this capacity, The Witch is a (semi-)mythical figure, always defined by the culture which produces it. That being said, how The Witch is dealt with varies: sometimes charms or wards are remedy enough (as with most unsavory spirits), but some would seek The Witch amongst themselves, demand responsibility. They would root The Witch out, have them punished for their “imagined” transgressions, force personal responsibility and demand they face the appropriate consequences or make their reparations. That’s the most basic and encompassing breakdown, nonspecific because in this case it doesn’t need to be. I know what you’re thinking: “Wait a minute, so you’re saying The Witch doesn’t exist as a real flesh and blood person, only a mythical scapegoat?” A good, valid question. Yes and no. Yes, The Witch is mythical, but does that mean those who practiced magic did not engage in summoning up blights and misfortunes on their bastard neighbors? Unlikely. Was everyone accused of being a Witch engaging in malicious magic? Absolutely not. Did some? Almost certainly. To be clear, however, what we’re not discussing here is the Witch Trails. The Church complicates matters (shocking) and we’ll touch on that briefly later. Instead, we change course now so that I might make my most important point:

Any user of magic does not a Witch make.

In fact, the aforementioned process of rooting out a Witch usually employs magic in some capacity, be it shooting an effigy with a silver bullet or putting the victim’s urine in a jar (two methods that are culturally specific). The witchmaster — to use a specific term broadly; one whose function is to discover and undo witchcraft — is, obviously, not a Witch, despite his or her magical proficiency. Nor those who practice folk magic, folk medicine, etc. That is until the rise of the Catholic Church, undoubtedly the origin of the conflation we see today (then expounded by Gardner and his various successors). Why is this such an important fact? Besides erasing nuance and betraying a misunderstanding of the term historically, it can be offensive and often times racist. Someone who practices Hoodoo, Curanderismo, or any specific cultural practice is not a Witch (or “witch” lowercase, for that matter) and to deem them such erases the history which produced not only the practice itself, but those who have dedicated themselves to it. These practices are borne from folk magic, often allowing for the survival of those maligned and thus underserved by their oppressors. They are largely passed orally and as such are preserved from unwanted influence. That is not to suggest they are static or unchanging, but curated by the knowledgeable and shared with those who are invited and trusted to put in the labor required. Even those practices which borrow from the magics of Europe and folk Catholicism (popular during the colonial period amongst commoners and thus, transported to the New and Old World alike), are not Witchcraft. During the Inquisition, the distinction between magic and witchcraft was upheld (to an extent that was convenient for the Church). See the Sicilian trials, where the Church bitterly shrugged when they couldn’t place the Devil in their folk practice. In fact, the Church maintained a disbelief in magic and only when they could insert the Devil did they bother with formal prosecution. That, however, is not something I’m going to unpack. Do know that Witchcraft was and is often used to excuse persecution: it is invisible and convenient. Remember, not only The Witch is a scapegoat, but so too the one accused. This does not extend to modern witchcraft, but many of the aforementioned folk traditions are unjustly maligned because of their presumed association with Witchcraft. All the more reason not to include them in your discussions of witchcraft.

But this does bring me to another important point:

Religion is not Witchcraft.

Vodun is not Witchcraft, Santeria is not Witchcraft, just as Hinduism and Islam are not Witchcraft. They are religions, they have frameworks which define all that happens within and without, and without understanding that framework, what magic they produce is not for your consumption. Period. And reading half-baked internet breakdowns will not make you an expert, in the same way watching Jimmy Swaggart or Joel Osteen won’t make you a priest. Have some respect. And while I’m on the topic, please refrain from calling anything belonging to an extant religion “mythology.” The difference between religion and mythology is only one of assigned validity: “religion” is always valid while “mythology” has become coded to mean “interesting, but ultimately primitive ignorance.” Indigenous religions exist, are valid, and attempts to confine them to the past is insensitive, please be mindful. Additionally, the concept of “mythology” only works if you believe the myth (see what I did there) that we are somehow culturally superior to those foreign to us, separated by either space or time (or both). That’s ethnocentrism, baby. Check yourself. That goes for things like Greek, Kemetic and Mesopotamian “mythology,” as well. They were state religions and even if it is not as damaging to the living to refer to them as “mythology,” it does paint a misleading picture and is no less founded on ignorance. Not to mention many such religions have been reconstructed to varying degrees and are being practiced again with what information is at their disposal.

So then, if I can’t call anyone or anything I don’t understand a Witch or Witchcraft, who can I? This one is easy: Anyone who wants to be called a witch. And notice how I didn’t capitalize it this time. I’m distinguishing the modern definition from the historical one. As mentioned above, at this time “witch” has come to mean one who practices “witchcraft,” a sort of magical catchall consisting of traditional folk magic (predominately European, but not exclusively), ceremonial magic, New-Age rituals, etc. For this reason, further distinctions are often made, i.e. I call myself a Red Witch, but my definition varies from others who call themselves the same. In something as varied as modern witchcraft, even specific terms have little weight. Ultimately, “witch” is what we call ourselves because it captures our position well enough without requiring further definition. People understand it (and misunderstand it) universally enough. It’s there, and by looking back we can understand how it came to be the term used. That being said, simply because it has come to be a catchall does not give anyone permission to force the label on those who refuse it. Just because someone does magic does not mean they’re a witch, even if that’s how you’ve come to understand the term or even how the term has been fed to you. And given the reimagining of the definition as the result of ignorance and a series of misunderstandings, they have no responsibility to explain why they would choose to refuse the moniker. Instead, we — witches — have more a responsibility when it comes to outlining our use of the term and explaining ourselves. Or at least those of us who do not corrupt livestock, put blights on our neighbors, or sow inconvenience at our every turn. What justification have we other than its easy, familiar, subversive? Is that enough? You can decide for yourself and leave it at that. If you want to call yourself a witch, then do so, but recognize it is not your position to assign the term as you see fit to those who continue to be harmed by such insouciant associations.

And know that I write this because I have been guilty of all of the above. I’m sharing so that my own transgressions are ones you need not make. It’s called growth and I’m providing a foundation for you to learn the “easy” way. I have learned, I have resolved to be better, so can you. Life’s a journey, knowledge is power, yadda yadda, cliche cliche, don’t disappoint me.Be conscious, be mindful, recognize your privilege and check when your entitlement is showing. That’s what growth is about. It’s work, sometimes hard but rarely as hard as you think. So do it.

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blackkudos · 4 years

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W. C. Handy

William Christopher Handy (November 16, 1873 – March 28, 1958) was a composer and musician who referred to himself as the Father of the Blues. Handy was one of the most influential songwriters in the United States. One of many musicians who played the distinctively American blues music, Handy did not create the blues genre but was the first to publish music in the blues form, thereby taking the blues from a regional music style (Delta blues) with a limited audience to a new level of popularity.

Handy was an educated musician who used elements of folk music in his compositions. He was scrupulous in documenting the sources of his works, which frequently combined stylistic influences from various performers.

Early life

Handy was born in Florence, Alabama, the son of Elizabeth Brewer and Charles Barnard Handy. His father was the pastor of a small church in Guntersville, a small town in northeast central Alabama. Handy wrote in his 1941 autobiography, Father of the Blues, that he was born in a log cabin built by his grandfather William Wise Handy, who became an African Methodist Episcopal minister after the Emancipation Proclamation. The log cabin of Handy's birth has been preserved near downtown Florence.

Handy's father believed that musical instruments were tools of the devil. Without his parents' permission, Handy bought his first guitar, which he had seen in a local shop window and secretly saved for by picking berries and nuts and making lye soap. Upon seeing the guitar, his father asked him, "What possessed you to bring a sinful thing like that into our Christian home?" and ordered him to "take it back where it came from", but he also arranged for his son to take organ lessons. The organ lessons did not last long, but Handy moved on to learn to play the cornet. He joined a local band as a teenager, but he kept this fact a secret from his parents. He purchased a cornet from a fellow band member and spent every free minute practicing it.

While growing up, he apprenticed in carpentry, shoemaking, and plastering. He was deeply religious. His musical style was influenced by the church music he sang and played in his youth and by the sounds of nature. He cited as inspiration the "whippoorwills, bats and hoot owls and their outlandish noises", Cypress Creek washing on the fringes of the woodland, and "the music of every songbird and all the symphonies of their unpremeditated art".

He worked on a "shovel brigade" at the McNabb furnace and described the music made by the workers as they beat shovels, altering the tone while thrusting and withdrawing the metal part against the iron buggies to pass the time while waiting for the overfilled furnace to digest its ore. He called the sound "better to us than the music of a martial drum corps, and our rhythms were far more complicated." He wrote, "Southern Negroes sang about everything...They accompany themselves on anything from which they can extract a musical sound or rhythmical effect." He would later reflect, "In this way, and from these materials, they set the mood for what we now call blues".

Career

In September 1892, Handy travelled to Birmingham, Alabama, to take a teaching exam. He passed it easily and gained a teaching job at the Teachers Agriculture and Mechanical College (the current-day Alabama A&M University) in Normal, then an independent community near Huntsville. Learning that it paid poorly, he quit the position and found employment at a pipe works plant in nearby Bessemer.

In his time off from his job, he organized a small string orchestra and taught musicians how to read music. He later organized the Lauzetta Quartet. When the group read about the upcoming World's Fair in Chicago, they decided to attend. To pay their way, they performed odd jobs along the way. They arrived in Chicago only to learn that the World's Fair had been postponed for a year. Next they headed to St. Louis, Missouri, but found no work.

After the quartet disbanded, Handy went to Evansville, Indiana. He played the cornet in the Chicago World's Fair in 1893. In Evansville, he joined a successful band that performed throughout neighboring cities and states. His musical endeavors were varied: he sang first tenor in a minstrel show, worked as a band director, choral director, cornetist, and trumpeter. At the age of 23, he became the bandmaster of Mahara's Colored Minstrels.

In a three-year tour they traveled to Chicago, throughout Texas and Oklahoma to Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida, and on to Cuba, Mexico and Canada. Handy was paid a salary of $6 per week. Returning from Cuba the band traveled north through Alabama, where they stopped to perform in Huntsville. Weary of life on the road, he and his wife, Elizabeth, stayed with relatives in his nearby hometown of Florence.

In 1896, while performing at a barbecue in Henderson, Kentucky, Handy met Elizabeth Price. They married on July 19, 1896. She gave birth to Lucille, the first of their six children, on June 29, 1900, after they had settled in Florence.

Around that time, William Hooper Councill, the president of what had become the Alabama Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes (the same college Handy had refused to teach at in 1892 due to low pay), hired Handy to teach music. He became a faculty member in September 1900 and taught through much of 1902. He was disheartened to discover that the college emphasized teaching European music considered to be "classical". He felt he was underpaid and could make more money touring with a minstrel group.

In 1902 Handy traveled throughout Mississippi, listening to various styles of popular black music. The state was mostly rural and music was part of the culture, especially in cotton plantations in the Mississippi Delta. Musicians usually played guitar or banjo or, to a much lesser extent, piano. Handy's remarkable memory enabled him to recall and transcribe the music he heard in his travels.

After a dispute with AAMC President Councill, Handy resigned his teaching position to return to the Mahara Minstrels and tour the Midwest and Pacific Northwest. In 1903 he became the director of a black band organized by the Knights of Pythias in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy and his family lived there for six years. In 1903, while waiting for a train in Tutwiler, in the Mississippi Delta, Handy had the following experience:

A lean loose-jointed Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept...As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars...The singer repeated the line three times, accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.

About 1905, while playing a dance in Cleveland, Mississippi, Handy was given a note asking for "our native music". He played an old-time Southern melody but was asked if a local colored band could play a few numbers. Three young men with a battered guitar, mandolin, and a worn-out bass walked onto the stage. Research by Elliott Hurwitt for the Mississippi Blues Trail identified the leader of the band in Cleveland as Prince McCoy.

They struck up one of those over and over strains that seem to have no beginning and certainly no ending at all. The strumming attained a disturbing monotony, but on and on it went, a kind of stuff associated with [sugar] cane rows and levee camps. Thump-thump-thump went their feet on the floor. It was not really annoying or unpleasant. Perhaps "haunting" is the better word.

Handy noted square dancing by Mississippi blacks with "one of their own calling the figures, and crooning all of his calls in the key of G." He remembered this when deciding on the key of "Saint Louis Blues". "It was the memory of that old gent who called figures for the Kentucky breakdown—the one who everlastingly pitched his tones in the key of G and moaned the calls like a presiding elder preaching at a revival meeting. Ah, there was my key—I'd do the song in G. In describing "blind singers and footloose bards" around Clarksdale, Handy wrote, "surrounded by crowds of country folks, they would pour their hearts out in song...They earned their living by selling their own songs — "ballets," as they called them — and I'm ready to say in their behalf that seldom did their creations lack imagination.

In 1909 Handy and his band moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where they played in clubs on Beale Street. "The Memphis Blues" was a campaign song written for Edward Crump, a Democrat Memphis mayoral candidate in the 1909 election and political boss. The other candidates also employed Black musicians for their campaigns. Handy later rewrote the tune and changed its name from "Mr. Crump" to "Memphis Blues." The 1912 publication of the sheet music of "The Memphis Blues" introduced his style of 12-bar blues; it was credited as the inspiration for the foxtrot by Vernon and Irene Castle, a New York dance team. Handy sold the rights to the song for $100. By 1914, when he was 40, he had established his musical style, his popularity had greatly increased, and he was a prolific composer. Handy wrote about using folk songs:

The primitive southern Negro, as he sang, was sure to bear down on the third and seventh tone of the scale, slurring between major and minor. Whether in the cotton field of the Delta or on the Levee up St. Louis way, it was always the same. Till then, however, I had never heard this slur used by a more sophisticated Negro, or by any white man. I tried to convey this effect...by introducing flat thirds and sevenths (now called blue notes) into my song, although its prevailing key was major...and I carried this device into my melody as well...This was a distinct departure, but as it turned out, it touched the spot.

The three-line structure I employed in my lyric was suggested by a song I heard Phil Jones sing in Evansville ... While I took the three-line stanza as a model for my lyric, I found its repetition too monotonous...Consequently I adopted the style of making a statement, repeating the statement in the second line, and then telling in the third line why the statement was made.

Regarding the "three-chord basic harmonic structure" of the blues, Handy wrote that the "(tonic, subdominant, dominant seventh) was that already used by Negro roustabouts, honky-tonk piano players, wanderers and others of the underprivileged but undaunted class from Missouri to the Gulf, and had become a common medium through which any such individual might express his personal feeling in a sort of musical soliloquy." He noted, "In the folk blues the singer fills up occasional gaps with words like 'Oh, lawdy' or 'Oh, baby' and the like. This meant that in writing a melody to be sung in the blues manner one would have to provide gaps or waits."

Writing about the first time "Saint Louis Blues" was played, in 1914, Handy said,

The one-step and other dances had been done to the tempo of Memphis Blues. ... When St Louis Blues was written the tango was in vogue. I tricked the dancers by arranging a tango introduction, breaking abruptly into a low-down blues. My eyes swept the floor anxiously, then suddenly I saw lightning strike. The dancers seemed electrified. Something within them came suddenly to life. An instinct that wanted so much to live, to fling its arms to spread joy, took them by the heels.

His published musical works were groundbreaking because of his ethnicity. In 1912, he met Harry Pace at the Solvent Savings Bank in Memphis. Pace was the valedictorian of his graduating class at Atlanta University and a student of W. E. B. Du Bois. By the time of their meeting, Pace had already demonstrated a strong understanding of business. He earned his reputation by saving failing businesses. Handy liked him, and Pace later became the manager of Pace and Handy Sheet Music.

While in New York City, Handy wrote:

I was under the impression that these Negro musicians would jump at the chance to patronize one of their own publishers. They didn't...The Negro musicians simply played the hits of the day...They followed the parade. Many white bands and orchestra leaders, on the other hand, were on the alert for novelties. They were therefore the ones most ready to introduce our numbers. Negro vaudeville artists...wanted songs that would not conflict with white acts on the bill. The result was that these performers became our most effective pluggers.

In 1917, he and his publishing business moved to New York City, where he had offices in the Gaiety Theatre office building in Times Square. By the end of that year, his most successful songs had been published: "Memphis Blues", "Beale Street Blues", and "Saint Louis Blues". That year the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, a white New Orleans jazz ensemble, had recorded the first jazz record, introducing the style to a wide segment of the American public. Handy had little fondness for jazz, but bands dove into his repertoire with enthusiasm, making many of them jazz standards.

Handy encouraged performers such as Al Bernard, "a young white man" with a "soft Southern accent" who "could sing all my Blues". He sent Bernard to Thomas Edison to be recorded, which resulted in "an impressive series of successes for the young artist, successes in which we proudly shared." Handy also published "Shake Rattle and Roll" and "Saxophone Blues", both written by Bernard. "Two young white ladies from Selma, Alabama (Madelyn Sheppard and Annelu Burns) contributed the songs "Pickaninny Rose" and "O Saroo", with the music published by Handy's company. These numbers, plus our blues, gave us a reputation as publishers of Negro music."

Expecting to make only "another hundred or so" of "Yellow Dog Blues" (originally entitled "Yellow Dog Rag"), Handy signed a deal with the Victor company. The Joe Smith recording of this song in 1919 became the best-selling recording of Handy's music to date.

Handy tried to interest black women singers in his music but was unsuccessful. In 1920 Perry Bradford persuaded Mamie Smith to record two of his non-blues songs ("That Thing Called Love" and "You Can't Keep a Good Man Down") that were published by Handy and accompanied by a white band. When Bradford's "Crazy Blues" became a hit as recorded by Smith, black blues singers became popular. Handy's business began to decrease because of the competition.

In 1920 Pace amicably dissolved his partnership with Handy, with whom he also collaborated as lyricist. Pace formed Pace Phonograph Company and Black Swan Records and many of the employees went with him. Handy continued to operate the publishing company as a family-owned business. He published works of other black composers as well as his own, which included more than 150 sacred compositions and folk song arrangements and about 60 blues compositions. In the 1920s, he founded the Handy Record Company in New York City; while this label released no records, Handy organized recording sessions with it, and some of those recordings were eventually released on Paramount Records and Black Swan Records. So successful was "Saint Louis Blues" that in 1929 he and director Dudley Murphy collaborated on a RCA motion picture of the same name, which was to be shown before the main attraction. Handy suggested blues singer Bessie Smith for the starring role because the song had made her popular. The movie was filmed in June and was shown in movie houses throughout the United States from 1929 to 1932.

In 1926 Handy wrote Blues: An Anthology—Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs. It is an early attempt to record, analyze, and describe the blues as an integral part of the South and the history of the United States. To celebrate the publication of the book and to honor Handy, Small's Paradise in Harlem hosted a party, "Handy Night", on Tuesday October 5, which contained the best of jazz and blues selections provided by Adelaide Hall, Lottie Gee, Maude White, and Chic Collins.

In a 1938 radio episode of Ripley's Believe it or not! Handy was described as "the father of jazz as well as the blues." Fellow blues performer Jelly Roll Morton wrote an open letter to Downbeat magazine fuming that he had actually invented jazz.

After the publication of his autobiography, Handy published a book on African-American musicians, Unsung Americans Sung (1944). He wrote three other books: Blues: An Anthology: Complete Words and Music of 53 Great Songs, Book of Negro Spirituals, and Negro Authors and Composers of the United States. He lived on Strivers' Row in Harlem. He became blind after an accidental fall from a subway platform in 1943. After the death of his first wife, he remarried in 1954 when he was 80. His bride was his secretary, Irma Louise Logan, who he frequently said had become his eyes. In 1955, he suffered a stroke, after which he began to use a wheelchair. More than eight hundred attended his 84th birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

On March 28, 1958, Handy died of bronchial pneumonia at Sydenham Hospital in New York City Over 25,000 people attended his funeral in Harlem's Abyssinian Baptist Church. Over 150,000 people gathered in the streets near the church to pay their respects. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

Compositions

Handy's music does not always follow the classic 12-bar pattern, often having 8- or 16-bar bridges between 12-bar verses.

"Memphis Blues", written 1909, published 1912. Although usually subtitled "Boss Crump", it is a distinct song from Handy's campaign satire, "Boss Crump don't 'low no easy riders around here", which was based on the good-time song "Mamma Don't Allow It."

"Yellow Dog Blues" (1912), "Your easy rider's gone where the Southern cross the Yellow Dog." The reference is to the crossing at Moorhead, Mississippi, of the Southern Railway and the local Yazoo and Mississippi Valley Railroad, called the Yellow Dog. By Handy's telling locals assigned the words "Yellow Dog" to the letters Y.D. (for Yazoo Delta) on the freight trains that they saw.

"Saint Louis Blues" (1914), "the jazzman's Hamlet."

"Loveless Love", based in part on the classic "Careless Love". Possibly the first song to complain of modern synthetics, "with milkless milk and silkless silk, we're growing used to soulless soul."

"Aunt Hagar's Blues", the biblical Hagar, handmaiden to Abraham and Sarah, was considered the "mother" of African Americans

"Beale Street Blues" (1916), written as a farewell to Beale Street of Memphis, which was named Beale Avenue until the song's popularity caused it to be changed

"Long Gone John (from Bowling Green)", about a famous bank robber

"Chantez-Les-Bas (Sing 'Em Low)", a tribute to the Creole culture of New Orleans

"Atlanta Blues", which includes the song "Make Me a Pallet on your Floor" as its chorus.

"Ole Miss Rag" (1917), a ragtime composition, recorded by Handy's Orchestra of Memphis

Awards and honors

On May 17, 1969, the United States Postal Service issued a commemorative stamp in his honor.

Handy was inducted in the National Academy of Popular Music Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1970.

He was inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1983.

He was inducted into the Alabama Jazz Hall of Fame in 1985, and was a 1993 Inductee into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, with the Lifework Award for Performing Achievement.

He received a Grammy Trustees Award for lifetime achievement in 1993.

Citing 2003 as "the centennial anniversary of when W.C. Handy composed the first blues music" the United States Senate in 2002 passed a resolution declaring the year beginning February 1, 2003 as the "Year of the Blues".

Handy was honored with two markers on the Mississippi Blues Trail, the "Enlightenment of W.C. Handy" in Clarksdale, Mississippi and a marker at his birthplace in Florence, Alabama.

Blues Music Award was known as the W. C. Handy Award until the name change in 2006.

W. C. Handy Music Festival is held annually in Florence, Alabama.

In 2017, his autobiography Father of the Blues was inducted in to the Blues Hall of Fame in the category of Classics of Blues Literature.

Discography

Handy's Orchestra of Memphis

The Old Town Pump/Sweet Child Introducing Pallet on the Floor (Columbia #2417) (1917)

A Bunch of Blues/Moonlight Blues (Columbia #2418) (1917)

Livery Stable Blues/That Jazz Dance Everyone Is Crazy About (Columbia #2419) (1917)

The Hooking Cow Blues/Ole Miss Rag (Columbia #2420) (1917)

The Snaky Blues/Fuzzy Wuzzy Rag (Columbia #2421) (1917)

Preparedness Blues (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/21/1917)

The Coburn Blues (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/24/1917)

Those Draftin' Blues (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/24/1917)

The Storybook Ball (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/25/1917)

Sweet Cookie Mine (Columbia) (unreleased) (recorded 9/25/1917)

Handy's Memphis Blues Band

Beale Street Blues/Joe Turner Blues (Lyric #4211) (9/1919) (never released)

Hesitating Blues/Yellow Dog Blues (Lyric #4212) (9/1919) (never released)

Early Every Morn/Loveless Love (Paramount #12011) (1922)

St. Louis Blues/Yellow Dog Blues (Paramount #20098) (1922)

St. Louis Blues/Beale Street Blues (Banner #1036) (1922)

She's No Mean Job/Muscle Shoals Blues (Banner #1053) (1922)

She's A Mean Job/Muscle Shoals Blues (Puritan #11112) (1922)

Muscle Shoals Blues/She's a Mean Job (Regal #9313) (1922)

St. Louis Blues/Yellow Dog Blues (Black Swan #2053) (1922)

Muscle Shoals Blues/She's a Mean Job (Black Swan #2054) (1922)

Handy’s Orchestra

Yellow Dog Blues/St. Louis Blues (Puritan #11098) (1922)

Louisville Blues/Aunt Hagar's Blues (Okeh #8046) (1923)

Panama/Down Hearted Blues (Okeh #8059) (1923)

Mama's Got the Blues/My Pillow and Me (Okeh #8066) (1923)

Gulf Coast Blues/Farewell Blues (Okeh #4880) (1923)

Sundown Blues/Florida Blues (Okeh #4886) (1923)

Darktown Reveille/Ole Miss Blues (Okeh #8110) (1923)

I Walked All the Way From East St. Louis (Library of Congress) (1938)

Your Clothes Look Lonesome Hanging on the Line (Library of Congress) (1938)

Got No More Home Than a Dog (Library of Congress) (1938)

Joe Turner (Library of Congress) (1938)

Careless Love (Library of Congress) (1938)

Getting' Up Holler (Library of Congress) (1938)

Oh De Kate's Up De River, Stackerlee's in de Ben (Library of Congress) (1938)

Roll On, Buddy (Library of Congress) (1938)

Olius Brown (Library of Congress) (1938)

Sounding the Lead on the Ohio River (Library of Congress) (1938)

Handy's Sacred Singers

Aframerican Hymn/Let's Cheer the Weary Traveler (Paramount #12719) (1929)

W. C. Handy's Orchestra

Loveless Love/Way Down South Where the Blues Begin (Varsity #8162) (1939)

St. Louis Blues/Beale Street Blues (Varsity #8163) (1939)

#11/16 #03/28

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twitchesandstitches · 5 years

Text

The Ringers - Secret Society of War

“Life is endless struggle and war is the foundation of life itself. From the tiniest micro-organisms to the flow of the great beasts of an ecosystem, the story of life is one of endless struggle. The losers perish, those who adapt and grow mighty survive. This is the Cosmic Imperative: the strong will flourish and dominate those who will not. And I have seen what will come if they do not. The multiverse must be brought into order, or nothing will survive. I have foreseen it, and I will not let another disaster end all we have built!”

These words have been attributed to Javik, founder of a shadowy militaristic group greatly at odds with the MILF Fleet and those like them, and thus did he outline the purpose of this group.

Their origins are somewhat hazy, but groups like this have been seen throughout countless ages, even before memories of the cataclysm had faded from memory. They likely predate that terrible event, but in rather altered form. They have largely appeared the same, with vastly diverse soldiers of many species loyal to individual generals who in turn supported another and followed a mighty soldier commanding the respect and will of the entire organization through charisma and a right to lead, symbolized by a massive gauntlet that channels magical energy to boost their innate powers. They are also marked by their heraldry, which is always the same: a stylized spiral, surmounted by a waterfall of blood.

War is their their purpose. Conflict is their means. And conquest, directly or indirect, is their goal. More than waterfalls of blood rain in their wake.

This particular incarnation have been dubbed the Ringers by the MILF Fleet, owing to a misunderstanding; the group initially referred to themselves as the Casus Bellum, after a human term for a reason to go to war, but emphasis was put on the ‘bellum’, as in ‘bell’. One thing lead to another, and they were called the Ringers as a result. The group has embraced it, saying that they heralds a new age that will survive whatever comes its way.

They are not dissimilar from their predecessors. Their means is always the same: war. Endless bloody war, a conflict of such savage ferocity that it will shake the stars from their positions and unmake entire universes, drag down whole sectors of the multiversal branches into recursive conflict so violent and vengeful it will make shockwaves into the planes of magic, the emotions of the dead lingering as resentful avatars of warfare, leading to yet more warfare. How they do this varies. In the past they have spread weapons of many kinds and encouraged all sides to pursue bitter rivalries (whether those weapons were biological modifications, new superpowers, destructive technologies, or powerful artifacts) and marveling at the mess. They also conquered directly, forcing the conquered to fight back and taught them the power of violence as a solution, then retreating to the shadows to watch the new warlords battle other nations in order to become secure. And sometimes they just fought at apparent random, sowing unrest and chaos wherever they traveled. The modern one (that is, the one relevant to this AU) has done all of these.

The end of all this bloodshed? It’s purpose, the reason for so much destruction?

Hard to say.

Each variation of this group had its own motivations. Some wanted to conquer. Others felt it was necessary to force others to adapt and become strong. And still others believed that endless war was an end all on its own, profiting from it or simply relishing endless bloodshed for their own perverse reasons.

Prior to the modern era, the last one ruled a society dominated by the protheans (an ancient and powerful insectoid people with powerful mental abilities), whose leaders were a part of this group as a shadow cabinet. They fell in the cataclysm and preserved their people in an enclave, though most of them were remade into monsters by a later threat. One prothean, at least, remained, the last true general of their people. This was Javik, who conquered the remnants of his people (now calling themselves Collectors) and organized them into the beginnings of an army.

For a time, he traveled the multiverse and conquered what he could, and studied what he couldn’t. He laid claim to a powerful gauntlet that was once a symbol of power among his people, which has been translated as the Doomfist by others. It is unclear what he experienced during this time, but at some point he found something that gave him a terrible vision of a grave doom that will befall the multiverse within the next thousand years or so. He will not speak of this to anyone but his closest allies, and those who know of it seem haunted, broken by the weight of this terrible omen.

Whatever it is he saw, it brought a terrible fire in him. Soon, he said, the multiverse would surely die. All creation would be snuffed out, this seeming collapse a brief reprieve before the final darkness to end all living things forever. All art and culture, all accomplishments and wisdom, simply wiped away. Like dirt from a filthy window. He vowed to do whatever it took to prevent this doom.

To this end, he has taken this legacy of warfare, noting that it always stood for evolution and growth through constant conflict. If warfare bred stronger people, he reasoned, then their course was to engage in endless warfare, forcing the multiverse to be strong and fight off the terrible threat approaching.

This is a laudable goal, but they perform horrific and terrible actions. They have conquered entire universes and annihilated all opposition without even a shred of mercy. They have slaughtered anyone standing before them. And when they choose to work in quiet, it is to sow terrible violence and discord by inciting conflict across entire branches of the multiverse tree, so that the survivors will be stronger for it… at the cost of their morality and restraint. Their work is brutal, dirty and often times vicious.

They are brutal, merciless but above all else, they are pragmatic. They believe in war, for war’s sake, but while their soldiers and sub-commanders may embrace endless bloodshed, the leaders and generals themselves can be more sensible. Pragmatism, it must be stated, dominates their every move. They do nothing without cause, though individual members can be irrational and impulsive, but as a group they can be reasoned with. It’s just that their goals and purpose is reprehensible enough that one can wonder why to even try.

This faction is intended to be a hardcore antagonistic one; most likely suitable characters to join this group are villain-types with a hint of ‘knight templar’ or zealous behavior. Conquerors, despots who demand absolute obedience for the good of all, those who want endless war for the fun of it or even a rational goal; those can fit too. Rage-filled beings out for revenge on all existence can qualify, as lower ranked officers. Principled but doing horrific things in service of their goal or grand vision. Villains who go ‘just think of the potential!’ can go here, as do ones who obsess over control and power. They are, after all, conquerors. Assume that there are two broad tiers of generals; the first are those with more lofty and high-minded goals, and a less respected one which are concerned with their own goals and lust for power. The Zealots and the Overlords, basically.

Some potential members as a baseline to work off of:

Javik, from Mass Effect. This is drawing more upon what he might have been like without a Reaper invasion to halt his people’s imperialistic ways; he is a cold and absolutely ruthless Renegade who thinks nothing of imposing his ways upon all who meet him, openly disdains those he considers primitives, and has a pretty blunt hatred of robots and thinking machine-life. However he is not nearly as terrified and broken down as he is in canon, but is much more of a visionary. He has suffered terrible visions and will do anything to prevent the future he has seen. With his philosophy of conflict/war breeding strength and taking steps to make more wars to do just that, he is also been combined with Doomfist of Overwatch, with a gauntlet to match. Akande Ogundimu himself might be one of his personal supporters, as might be Erik Killmonger of Marvel.

Javik is technically a leader of sorts; he is the champion of the movement, their inspirational guide, and one of their mightiest fighters. However he is not their only leader, and may be ‘demoted’, narratively speaking, in favor of Sexy Ladies that can fulfill his role and be more plot-appropriate. (Alternatively; just have Javik be a prothean lady here?)

The Condesce/Meenah Peixes from Homestuck. As hinted in earlier posts, Beforus was destroyed in past days and one of the survivors was the new empress by default, Meenah Peixes. As years pressed on she grew more violent and enraged at her people’s misfortune, gradually developing into the canon Condesce’s mindless rage and conquest, but here it wasn’t to satisfy her ego or serve eldritch entity’s plots, but in a desperate attempt to carve out a safe haven for her people. Ultimately this was unsuccessful, and she has since founded a massive hyper corporation. Javik found her and told her of his visions, and inspired her to save the multiverse by beating the living shit out of it, with a promise of her people being on top once their plans succeed. Her battlelust ignited, she is now one of the biggest and most important figures in the organization… literally, as she is planet-sized at full power.

The Condesce is a hyper flirtatious and gourmand who delights in devouring entire worlds and possess all the powers of all troll castes (similar to Terezi, but with far more experience with those gifts), with her chosen elite blessed with similar powers. She is a much lighter character than in canon; Doc Scratch and Lord English have nothing to do with her, if they are even around, and her motivations are much less selfish. Granted, she is still a hedonistic glutton, but she DOES have higher minded goals. She might be romancing Javik, charmed by his capacity for violence and vision for absolute survival no matter what. (WHAT WOULD THE CHILDREN LOOK LIKE?)

Starscream, former Air Commander of the Decepticon Empire, defected when it was clear that Megatron had become nothing more than a vessel for the dreaded Unicron, taking with him those Decepticons with more high-minded goals of protecting Cybertron’s legacy. Always more concerned with his own ambitions, he was nonetheless repelled by Megatron’s increasing monstrousness and became rivals with Javik. Eventually, as the two of them carved out empires right next to one another (Starscream and Javik’s mutual disdain for organic and mechanical life, respectively, making for poor neighbors), they earned mutual respect for the other’s skill and Javik worked his way past his dislike and asked Starscream to join them. Starscream, eager to advance himself once more, agreed and is one of the most powerful figures of the organization. With him are a vast number of Decepticons (mostly jetformers and other aeriel combatants), many of them combiners.

Starscream is infamous for two things: treachery and incompetence. Neither apply here. He has no reason to overthrow either Javik, the Condesce, or anyone in a similar position because he technically already has the power he craves and the respect and admiration he believes he deserves. He will not betray them unless given a strong reason to. And while Starscream is a terrible judge of character, he is an excellent strategist on the ground and a terrifying combatant.

The first of them are technically a group: the Combaticons (all fembots, in this continuity), led by the armored guns-on-wheels monstrosity Onslaught, and her polyamorous band, who comprise this team. Vortex the helicopter (noted interrogator and smart aleck), Blast Off (rocket/jet analogue, super reckless and a sincere believer in Friendship), Swindle (con artist, schemer and war profiteer) and Brawl (tank, total brute and good-natured scraphead, which is like a meathead but with robots). Together they can fuse into the incredibly massive and powerful Bruticus Maximus, an absurdly stacked and powerful combination of their relationship; playful love with each other, death to anything else within range.

They are very much like an inversion of the Dinobots; they are all military-grade functions who were content with their lot in life, and signed up with Megatron before their people’s civil war in hopes of finding a more secure life for themselves, and like the Dinobots, their boisterous and cheery demeanor masks the finest strategic minds of the Decepticon Empire, a disguise that suits them fine. Unlike the Dinobots, they outright consider organic life as unworthy animals that don’t deserve to live, though sufficiently spirited organics can be considered ‘honorary robots’. They signed up with the Ringers after losing faith in Megatron’s long-term prospects, and hope to secure a future for robotic life such as themselves. They’re slowly learning to at least respect organics in general. The Dinobots and them have a fanatical hatred for one another; Volcanicus and Bruticus will invariably charge straight at one another whenever an opportunity presents itself, intent on ripping out the other’s sparks.

Other Decepticons to come along with the Combaticons include Strika (an infamously gorgeous and amazonian juggernaut) and Obsidian. At one point they brought Lugnut, a bomber plane desperately seeking someone to follow after the loss of Megatron, but he has since defected to the Cobalts and fanatically reveres Vriska.

The other Decepticon leader is a controversial figure: Airachnid. Technically a helicopter fembot, she is a rare subset of Transformers who can partially shift her robot mode into a spider-like shape, and is considered an Insecticon, which are a eusocial sub-type of Transformers that transform into insectoid beast modes. Whether through biological status as a hive queen or modifications to herself, she can command other Insecticons that are in her ‘hive’, and has since expanded this power to dominion over insectoid beings in general. She commands a massive army of enormous Insecticons (many of them combiners), xenomorphs (of the Alien series), bug-type Pokemon of all kinds, the flying variety of the svartalfar (God of War series), and more; if it has a bug-like theme or appearance, some of them have been chained to her will. At one point she did have Homestuck trolls in her ranks, but was convinced to hand them off to the Condesce in exchange for other favors.

And like Airachnid herself, each and every one of them is a vampire. Long since drained dry to feed her insatiable appetite, they in turn have become horrific monsters lusting for the lives of all around them, held back only by her will… though it seems that they are slowly regaining their sense of self and control, following gruesome experiments she has performed on them.

Technically she is a Terrorcon, an Transformer that feeds upon the lifeblood of their people, much like what the Decepticons still loyal to Megatron have degenerated into. Unlike them, she is rational (if horrifically callous) and aware of things. It’s unclear what she is, and she is deeply intrigued in this mystery herself. Also unlike them, she can feed on any being, so long as they have some kind of fuel or blood to feast upon, and she fancies herself a gourmand.

This version of Airachnid (who is a hyper hourglass, in terms of body shape, and is probably at least a hundred feet tall after feeding so voraciously) is a mix of the sexual sadist and serial killer from Transformers Prime, but is more akin to the IDW version. She was original a social psychologist and pioneer in the field of shadowplay, or surgical alterations to the brain to influence personality or the ability to only think certain thoughts. Never aligned to Decepticon or Autobot interests, she still sided with the ‘Cons as they gave her the freedom to perform gruesome experiments to test her theories on just what you could do to the processor and push its capacity to take abuse.

Even now she is fascinated by the mind and performs terrible experiments to examine her theories, under her auspices entire planets are used as control groups for social experiments, and she is in charge of developing potential models for the future societies the Ringers may one day instate.

She and Grimlock have an unspecified history, tied to extremely gruesome bite marks around her neck and horrific lobotomy incisions on his head; she is fascinated by him and wishes to study the mentality of a self-proclaimed monster that protects the weak. For his part, he really, really just wants her dead, and possibly to tear her head off and wear her exoskeleton as a cape. (That is, he wants to flay her and wear it like an accessory.)

A possible candidate for inclusion is Yellow Diamond; after the fall of Homeworld, she and her fellow Diamonds, Blue and White, were worn as jewelry upon the claws of Megatron, until a daring battle on their behalf from Mega Pink Diamond (the fusion of Rose Quartz and her son Steven) freed them. If she does wind up in these ranks, assume that Yellow has become almost corrupted from the proximity of spending so much time near Megatron, the voice of Unicron constantly pressing in on her mind and carving her sanity into horribly fractured chunks. She has received horrific visions very similar to Javik’s, and the nature of them strongly implies that Unicron may have something to do with the cataclysm Javik has foretold, but nothing is certain of yet.

Certainly she has been so badly affected she has been partially corrupted; her form is mainly in flux, held in check only by her iron self control, and when stressed she begins to degenerate into a horrific dragon-like thing without form or shape, only absolute fear and the all-consuming violence of that fear.

Nonetheless, she is extraordinarily powerful; even weakened, she is larger than an entire planet and her physical might alone eclipses anyone else in the entire organization save the Condesce, in certain respects. With magical infusions, she can be even larger than a gas giant, dismissively wiping out star fleets with a flick of her interstellar finger, and she can annihilate magical constructs and shaped fields with her dominion over magic, rendering her a walking anti-magic weapon of mass destruction when she chooses. In conjunction with the massive army she has of loyal Gems that still serve her, and bear in mind that even regular Gems are some of the largest and most powerful beings in the known multiverse, she has an enormous amount of power.

She’s learned much from eons of torment and humiliation, and she seeks to build a new world of absolute safety for all beings. She’s not quite as dismissive of organic life as she once was, but considers them amusing pets until they prove themselves to be nearly on level with mineral beings and magical entities. She hates Decepticons in general, but has struck up a very odd friendship with Starscream, on the basis of them both hating Megatron’s internals and suffering from his actions, in different ways. Theories suggest they have even fused on at least one occasion into a massive magical mecha called Silicate Energon.

(With all this in mind, and her status as a hyper curvy giantess, she might be slated to share co-’real leader’ status with the Condesce, with Javik narratively demoted to a prophet. Sort of like an anti-Optimus Prime.)

And of course, like many of the other factions involved here, there are various higher forces associated with them. Most of these are not gods… at all, save from a very specialized point of view. Many of them are demons; not cute monster girls but genuine actual demons, heartless embodiments of pure evil dedicated to the enslavement of the multiverse, and the Ringers have mostly entrapped them into servitude as a consequence of deals made with their various lords and masters (so any demonic character that could be a Thicc Demon could qualify here). One of these is Mephista, negotiating on behalf of her father Mephisto (or possibly IS Mephisto in a feminine identity), and she has given them access to summon many mighty demonic monsters and monster women in exchange for unspecified tasks that may prove to be good plot hooks.

Hela, of Marvel but with more attributes of her mythological source, is also assisting them, but her purpose is unclear. Various elementals of cold and monsters acting on her behalf are aiding them, and it is believed that she wants more war, and sees them as a useful means in that regard. Notably Hela contacted them through mortal avatars, which has the Ringers highly suspicious: what is her purpose and why does she care?

As for character suggestions, as stated before, any war-like characters can be suitable, if their moral outlook doesn’t lend them more towards the heroism of the MILF Fleet or the fun-loving glory of the Cobalts. Those who believe in things like ‘strength is the only thing that matters’, ‘the weak deserve to be dominated’, or otherwise have strong social darwinist outlooks are extremely ideal for this group!

Possible groups working with them/for them are the most pragmatic aspects of the Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40k (such as the Dark Angels and Imperial Guard), and the most savage ones (like the World Eaters). Orks following the 40k mentality, led by Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka, are also perfect in a ‘do what the big bosses say’, as would Tolkien orcs. (In fact, any orc that is basically kind of a jerk fits.) The True Horde/Iron Horde of Warcraft would be positively ideal, with many goblins, blood elves and others rounding out the ranks. A MILF-tier Azula from Avatar: The Last Airbender (with her size proportionate to her firebending prowess, possibly with some dragon monster girl traits) would also be a contender.

INTERACTIONS WITH OTHER FACTIONS

Naturally the MILF Fleet is at odds with them on an ideological level: the MILFs believe in evolution in a similar way that the Ringers believe in conflict breeding development, but they couldn’t be more different. The MILFs endorse gentle change, the development of transformative technologies, and understanding that flesh does not equal you. They are transhumanist paragons who want everyone to be happy and safe, and for love between all sapient beings. The Ringers are explicitly trying to conquer everything and institute their own absolute rule to prevent a nebulous threat. They do not like each other. At all. They might work together… but only rarely, and otherwise try to avoid one another. The Ringers are more likely to approach them, in order to get ahold of their mods or powers as part of their own plans, but more often than not it is full on war between the two factions.

Rumor has it that Sierra in particular has a deep resentment of Javik, due to their completely opposite temperaments: Javik is a biochauvanist, Sierra loves robots (sometimes in a VERY physical way). Javik believes conflict breeds character, Sierra thinks war is just pointless suffering. Javik dislikes cybernetics and excessive augmentation, and Sierra was already plugging in a new computer into her head before he could finish saying so. They are constantly fighting, and Javik is determined to be the one to beat her once and for all. Sierra just wishes he’d go away and stop being mean already.

The Cobalts are hired by them as mercenaries, but don’t care for them much. They’re just so… serious and not fun. The two don’t often come to blows as an ideological matter, but can compete over treasure scores, good loot, or competing over territory. The sheer power of the Ringer makes them both imposing threats, and an irresistible target to Vriska; she keeps seeing ‘SUCK ME DRY RIGHT NOW’ signs on them and she drools at the thought of having their powers and relics, all for her.

As for other factions, the Ringers are not a widely known group. They do not act publically, but through proxies, pawns and so on. When they do act directly, they do not give any sign they’re part of a larger group but individuals carving out their own empires. Consequently they might have allies and enemies among the many factions of the multiverse, but it is not widely known that they are one massive and very dangerous visionary organization.

#/#//#///#////#/////#crossthicc AU #queued #the ringers

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stefankarlfanblog · 3 years

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I’m going to translate a series of articles that Stefán Karl wrote for the news website of Kvennablaðið, unfortunately Kvennablaðið has been discontinued and the site no longer exists.

But thankfully, the articles that Stefán Karl wrote were archived on archive.org and as a way to archive them further, I’m going to translate all of them.

Something to note first, while the text is intact, a lot of the images weren’t archived properly so they’re lost, I’m also going to leave some misspellings as is in the articles just for the sake of archiving.

This is part 7 of 8:

Original article: https://web.archive.org/web/20151114231315/http://kvennabladid.is/2015/10/08/af-menningarsveppum

Of the cultural fungi

Published on 8 Oct 2015, Categorized ARTS & CULTURE Tags: OPINION PERSONS • ELITE • FUNGI• ART SPIRITS • ART • PHOTOGRAPHY • CULTURE • CULTURAL LIGHTS • MUSHROOMS

Sveppir (fungi) are in many ways unique organisms and therefore classified into their own kingdom, the fungal kingdom. For a long time, however, fungi were classified as plants, because at first look they were more like them compared to animals. There is, however, a fundamental difference between fungi and plants where plants are primitive and use chlorophyll for photosynthesis, but fungi can't photosynthesize and form their own nutrients themselves, but they're preservatives and feed on organisms such as dead plant parts and carcasses of animals.

Self-appointed cultural fungi also exist. I want to avoid mentioning names and groups, as these cultural fungi are quite fond of cracking down on artistic sprouts by any name.

About cultural fungi, like other fungi, that they are predisposed to photosynthesis when it comes to culture and the arts and therefore sit saltily in the distance - keep quiet for years, but then spring up from the soil to absorb nutrients from products that the sprouts themselves have long forgotten.

There is little more recognition in the arts than achieving the goal of grabbing the attention of the cultural fungi, which considers itself so much of an astute that it does not even have to familiarize itself with what the artistic sprout does before learned articles about its results spring up like mold in wetlands.

A recent example of this awakening of the cultural fungi is when a fool in the wild allowed himself to call an "elite" by name.

The elite is precisely the kingdom with which the cultured fungi was always classified as before, until the cultured fungi couldn't produce their own nutrition as has been stated before and need "fertilizer" or some kind of support in order to hope for life. And because the cultural fungi and the wannabe cultural fungi have everything under the elite, they react to the idea of talking the elite down and pretending that it doesn't exist. This is a well-known method in the whole animal -and plant kingdom.

But in the fungus kingdom some are edible while others are poisonous and it is often impossible to distinguish between them and therefore it is important to urge the ancient saying: "Beware of imitations". Cultural fungi often try to get art sprouts to adapt to them, which unfortunately often causes the latter illnesses - even death.

With this article, I would like to remind you that we must take good care of nature, not step on the buds of art and not indulge in any cultural fungus. Most of the sprouts are edible, although they are not suitable for everyone, but the fungi can be dangerous, as they are seasonal products, except those that are produced in specially made greenhouses, tasteless and low in nutrients.

#stefán karl #stefán karl stefánsson #stefan karl stefansson #stefan karl #2015 #kvennablaðið

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naskarism-blog · 6 years

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Soul is born in the brain and dies with it

What is Soul? Is it magic? Or is it something pretty much physical but seems to be magical? Is it something Science can explain? Or is it beyond human comprehension? In this article you are going to have your confusions surrounding the term Soul, thrown away, once and forever.

But before you learn about Soul, I must tell you a thing or two about the human brain’s affinity towards mysticism. Our species, that is the Homo sapiens evolved around 200,000 years ago, and even before that our previous ancestral species existed, millions of years back. During the most of existential period we lived in the wild alongside wild animals. On the contrary Modern Science has only evolved a few centuries ago. So, compared to the civilized scientific mind of modern human, the instinctual primitive mind is way older and more deep rooted into the brain. That primitive mind has been surviving in the wild environment for a long time in the midst of fear and ignorance. By nature, that mind is easily fooled by supernatural mysticism. It is very gullible. And no matter how much we the civilized human beings advance in the fields of Modern Sciences, there is always a part of us, that tries to allure us with magical nonsense. Because that nonsense has been with us since the birth of humanity. Scientific understanding of things arrived much later, and in fact, if we compare it with our millions of years long acquaintance with ignorance and fear, Science would look in its infancy. So it is not easy for your brain to embrace the newly discovered scientific explanations of various phenomena which you previously knew as correlated to the domain of the Supernatural or Paranormal.

For example, due to lack of comprehension, primitive humans believed thunderstorms were caused by gods or spirits in the sky, earthquakes were caused by earth spirits and so on. But, now it is common knowledge for you, how various geophysical processes give rise to various weathers, and various natural disasters. Now you know that plate tectonics is responsible for earthquakes. All these things are common sense to the general public. In fact, now you know that the planets including our earth revolve around the sun, but a few thousand years ago, this simple idea was perceived by the ignorant population as blasphemy. Because it was against the mysticism of those days.

Science has advanced quite a lot since then. Especially with advancement in the field of Brain Science, we finally have started explore the existential questions of human life. We are finally investigating questions revolving around our own entity and identity. We Neuroscientists are constantly exploring the fantastic domain of the human mind to understand what makes each human being tick the way they do. And one of the most fascinating terms correlated with the term Mind, is Soul.

The concept of Soul goes way back during our tribal days in the jungle. The only way the tribal primitives could make sense of death, is to incorporate the concept of Soul. They perceived Soul as the breath of Life, without which the body would not function. From this, emerged the ancient mind-body problem. Due to lack of any understanding of human biology whatsoever, the primitive humans perceived Soul and Body to be separate because that’s the only way they could make sense of their fellow human one moment walking around and the next moment lying on the ground lifeless. And in order to diminish the uncertainty that goes along with the notion of death they further developed the primeval idea that Soul is immortal which upon leaving the body reaches a peaceful place, which many cultures termed as Heaven. This idea has been celebrated throughout the world for a long time, because of the comfort that it brings. It erases all the devastating anxiety, uncertainty and ignorance surrounding death. Hence till this modern day of fascinating scientific achievements the common human mind deems death as a blissful departure of the soul to another realm – far more beautiful that our planet earth.

And this idea of heaven is so strong in general human mind, that even today, every now and then we scientists come across various individuals who claim to have visited Heaven and come back to planet earth. These people are not lying. They are indeed telling what they experienced during a life and death situation. And here the ancient idea came into action. A person who has heard a lot about the Afterlife during his or her lifetime, once faced with a near death event, that idea would become a reality through his or her neural circuits. During a traumatic event the extremely high level of stress hormones triggers the release of a special neurochemical called DMT, or Dimethyltryptamine.

DMT is one of the most profound hallucinogenic compounds on this planet. And upon the influence of DMT the human mind experiences a reality so soothing and surreal that makes the person forget about the trauma almost completely. It enables the person to deal with the situation. And what the person hallucinates about during that times, depends on the predominant ideas, fantasies and wishes rooted into the neural network of the person’s brain. So, here the person may not actually go to heaven, but to him or her, the hallucianatory reality of heaven or afterlife seems more real and the actual reality. It’s the brain’s way of self preservation. These near death experiences further strengthen the general idea of an Afterlife and the immortality of Soul in the masses. Now let’s answer the billion dollar question. What is Soul?

It is not really a billion dollar question any more, at least for those who have a basic understanding of human biology. As I have said in my book What is Mind?

Soul is the functional expression of neurons.

When billions of neurons start firing, the result is a mesmerizing thing called Soul, or which we more simply refer to as the Mind. Mind and Soul are one and the same thing. Although various cultures till this date perceive Soul to be the driving force behind the Human Mind. Cultural ideas have their own mysticism attached to them, so those ancient concepts cannot be accepted literally. Rather a rational civilization must investigate those beliefs beyond the limitations of primitive superstitions, in the pursuit of understanding the human mind in a better way.

Human Mind, or from an ancient perspective – the Soul, is born from protoplasmic activity within the brain. All regions of the brain’s neural network play their distinctive roles to construct distinct features of the Mind, such as Emotions, Memory, Individuality etc. If you turn even a small portion of the neural network off, the correlated mental feature of that region would completely disappear from the person’s mental life. And this way, if you keep turning off various regions of the brain one after another, in the end, there would be no sign of mental activity whatsoever. Soul would cease to exist. Because the brain that creates this fascinating phenomenon has been turned off. This is exactly what happens when a person is announced brain- dead.

Hence, we can quite naturally deduce that Soul does not come from any Supernatural Domain outside the body, rather it is born inside the biological domain of the body. And along comes the deduction that soul is born in the brain and dies with it. So, there is no Afterlife, or Heaven or Hell, or Reincarnation. With death you simply cease to exist as your self. However your bodily elements which created your individuality, or from a deeper perspective your Soul, gets dispersed into the nature. So, rhetorically speaking you do live on forever, but not as yourself like depicted in many of the religious cultures, rather as an eternal part of the Cosmos.

(This Article was originally published on Goodreads)

Further Reading Abhijit Naskar, 2016, Autobiography of God: Biopsy of A Cognitive Reality Abhijit Naskar, 2016, What is Mind?

#soul #afterlife #heaven #life after death #death #paradise #supernatural

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pope-francis-quotes · 6 years

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19th January >> (Zenit.org @zenitenglish) Pope Francis’ Address to Indigenous People of Amazon Region in Peru: ‘I wanted to come to share your challenges and reaffirm with you a whole-hearted option for the defence of life, the defence of the earth and the defence of cultures’ (Photo ~ Pope Francis © Vatican Media) Below is the Vatican provided text of Pope Francis’ address during his meeting with indigenous people of the Amazon region in the “Coliseo Regional Madre de Dios”: *** Dear Brothers and Sisters, Here with you, I feel welling up within me the song of Saint Francis: “Praise be to you, my Lord!” Yes, praise be to you for the opportunity you have given us in this encounter. Thank you, Bishop David Martínez de Aguirre Guinea, Hector, Yésica and María Luisa, for your words of welcome and for your witness talks. In you, I would like to thank and greet all the inhabitants of Amazonia. I see that you come from the different native peoples of Amazonia: Harakbut, Esse-ejas, Matsiguenkas, Yines, Shipibos, Asháninkas. Yaneshas, Kakintes, Nahuas, Yaminahuas, Juni Kuin, Madijá, Manchineris, Kukamas, Kandozi, Quichuas, Huitotos, Shawis, Achuar, Boras, Awajún, Wampís, and others. I also see that among us are peoples from the Andes who came to the forest and became Amazonians. I have greatly looked forward to this meeting. Thank you for being here and for helping me to see closer up, in your faces, the reflection of this land. It is a diverse face, one of infinite variety and enormous biological, cultural and spiritual richness. Those of us who do not live in these lands need your wisdom and knowledge to enable us to enter into, without destroying, the treasures that this region holds. And to hear an echo of the words that the Lord spoke to Moses: “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground” (Ex 3:5). Allow me to say once again: “Praise to you, Lord, for your marvellous handiwork in your Amazonian peoples and for all the biodiversity that these lands embrace! This song of praise is cut short when we learn about, and see, the deep wounds that Amazonia and its peoples bear. I wanted to come to visit you and listen to you, so that we can stand together, in the heart of the Church, and share your challenges and reaffirm with you a whole-hearted option for the defence of life, the defence of the earth and the defence of cultures. The native Amazonian peoples have probably never been so threatened on their own lands as they are at present. Amazonia is being disputed on various fronts. On the one hand, there is neo-extractivism and the pressure being exerted by great business interests that want to lay hands on its petroleum, gas, lumber, gold and forms of agro-industrial monocultivation. On the other hand, its lands are being threatened by the distortion of certain policies aimed at the “conservation” of nature without taking into account the men and women, specifically you, my Amazonian brothers and sisters, who inhabit it. We know of movements that, under the guise of preserving the forest, hoard great expanses of woodland and negotiate with them, leading to situations of oppression for the native peoples; as a result, they lose access to the land and its natural resources. These problems strangle her peoples and provoke the migration of the young due to the lack of local alternatives. We have to break with the historical paradigm that views Amazonia as an inexhaustible source of supplies for other countries without concern for its inhabitants. I consider it essential to begin creating institutional expressions of respect, recognition and dialogue with the native peoples, acknowledging and recovering their native cultures, languages, traditions, rights and spirituality. An intercultural dialogue in which you yourselves will be “the principal dialogue partners, especially when large projects affecting your land are proposed”.[1] Recognition and dialogue will be the best way to transform relationships whose history is marked by exclusion and discrimination. At the same time, it is right to acknowledge the existence of promising initiatives coming from your own communities and organizations, which advocate that the native peoples and communities themselves be the guardians of the woodlands. The resources that conservation practices generate would then revert to benefit your families, improve your living conditions and promote health and education in your communities. This form of “doing good” is in harmony with the practices of “good living” found in the wisdom of our peoples. Allow me to state that if, for some, you are viewed as an obstacle or a hindrance, the fact is your lives cry out against a style of life that is oblivious to its own real cost. You are a living memory of the mission that God has entrusted to us all: the protection of our common home. The defence of the earth has no other purpose than the defence of life. We know of the suffering caused for some of you by emissions of hydrocarbons, which gravely threaten the lives of your families and contaminate your natural environment. Along the same lines, there exists another devastating assault on life linked to this environmental contamination favoured by illegal mining. I am speaking of human trafficking: slave labour and sexual abuse. Violence against adolescents and against women cries out to heaven. “I have always been distressed at the lot of those who are victims of various kinds of human trafficking. How I wish that all of us would hear God’s cry, ‘Where is your brother?’ (Gen 4:9). Where is your brother or sister who is enslaved? Let us not look the other way. There is greater complicity than we think. This issue involves everyone!”[2] How can we fail to remember Saint Turibius, who stated with dismay in the Third Council of Lima “that not only in times past were great wrongs and acts of coercion done to these poor people, but in our own time many seek to do the same…” (Session III, c. 3). Sadly, five centuries later, these words remain timely. The prophetic words of those men of faith – as Hector and Yèsica reminded us – are the cry of this people, which is often silenced or not allowed to speak. That prophecy must remain alive in our Church, which will never stop pleading for the outcast and those who suffer. This concern gives rise to our basic option for the life of the most defenceless. I am thinking of the peoples referred to as “Indigenous Peoples in Voluntary Isolation” (PIAV). We know that they are the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. Their primitive lifestyle made them isolated even from their own ethnic groups; they went into seclusion in the most inaccessible reaches of the forest in order to live in freedom. Continue to defend these most vulnerable of our brothers and sisters. Their presence reminds us that we cannot use goods meant for all as consumerist greed dictates. Limits have to be set that can help preserve us from all plans for a massive destruction of the habitat that makes us who we are. The recognition of these people – who can never be considered a minority, but rather authentic dialogue partners – as of all the native peoples, reminds us that we are not the absolute owners of creation. We need urgently to appreciate the essential contribution that they bring to society as a whole, and not reduce their cultures to an idealized image of a natural state, much less a kind of museum of a bygone way of life. Their cosmic vision and their wisdom, have much to teach those of us who are not part of their culture. All our efforts to improve the lives of the Amazonian peoples will prove too little.[3] The culture of our peoples is a sign of life. Amazonia is not only a reserve of biodiversity but also a cultural reserve that must be preserved in the face of the new forms of colonialism. The family is, and always has been, the social institution that has most contributed to keeping our cultures alive. In moments of past crisis, in the face of various forms of imperialism, the families of the original peoples have been the best defence of life. Special care is demanded of us, lest we allow ourselves to be ensnared by ideological forms of colonialism, disguised as progress, that slowly but surely dissipate cultural identities and establish a uniform, single… and weak way of thinking. Listen to the elderly. They possess a wisdom that puts them in contact with the transcendent and makes them see what is essential in life. Let us not forget that “the disappearance of a culture can be just as serious, or even more serious, than the disappearance of a species of plant or animal”.[4] The one way for cultures not to disappear is for them to keep alive and in constant movement. How important is what Yésica and Hector told us: “We want our children to study, but we don’t want the school to erase our traditions, our languages; we don’t want to forget our ancestral wisdom!” Education helps us to build bridges and to create a culture of encounter. Schooling and education for the native peoples must be a priority and commitment of the state: an integrated and inculturated commitment that recognizes, respects and integrates their ancestral wisdom as a treasure belonging to the whole nation, as María Luzmila made clear to us. I ask my brother bishops to continue, as they are doing even in the remotest places in the forest, to encourage intercultural and bilingual education in the schools, in institutions of teacher training, and in the universities.[5] I express my appreciation of the initiatives that the Amazonian Church in Peru helps carry out in favour of the native peoples. These include schools, student residences, centres of research and development like the José Pio Aza Cultural Centre, CAAAP and CETA, and new and important intercultural projects like NOPOKI, aimed expressly at training young people from the different ethnic groups of our Amazonia. I likewise support all those young men and women of the native peoples who are trying to create from their own standpoint a new anthropology, and working to reinterpret the history of their peoples from their own perspective. I also encourage those who through art, literature, craftsmanship and music show the world your worldview and your cultural richness. Much has been written and spoken about you.It is good that you are now the ones to define yourselves and show us your identity. We need to listen to you. How many missionaries, men and women, have devoted themselves to your peoples and defended your cultures! They did so inspired by the Gospel. Christ himself took flesh in a culture, the Jewish culture, and from it, he gave us himself as a source of newness for all peoples, in such a way that each, in its own deepest identity, feels itself affirmed in him. Do not yield to those attempts to uproot the Catholic faith from your peoples.[6] Each culture and each worldview that receives the Gospel enriches the Church by showing a new aspect of Christ’s face. The Church is not alien to your problems and your lives, she does not want to be aloof from your way of life and organization. We need the native peoples to shape the culture of the local churches in Amazonia. Help your bishops, and the men and women missionaries, to be one with you, and in this way, by an inclusive dialogue, to shape a Church with an Amazonian face, a Church with a native face. In this spirit, I have convoked a Synod for Amazonia in 2019. I trust in your peoples’ capacity for resilience and your ability to respond to these difficult times in which you live. You have shown this at different critical moments in your history, with your contributions and with your differentiated vision of human relations, with the natural environment and your way of living the faith. I pray for you, for this land blessed by God, and I ask you, please, not to forget to pray for me. Many thanks! Tinkunakama (Quechua: Until we meet again) _________________________ [1] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, 146. [2] Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium, 211. [3] We hear disturbing reports about the spread of certain diseases. The silence is alarming and deadly. By remaining silent, we fail to work for prevention, especially among adolescents and young people, and to ensure treatment, thus condemning the sick to a cruel ostracism. We call upon states to implement policies of intercultural health that take into account the experience and the worldview of the native people, training professionals from each ethnic group who can deal with the disease in the context of their own worldview. As I pointed out in Laudato Si’, once again we need to speak out against the pressure applied to certain countries by international organizations that promote reproductive policies favouring infertility. These are particularly directed at the native peoples. We know too that the practice of sterilizing women, at times without their knowledge, continues to be promoted. [4] Encyclical Letter Laudato Si’, 145. [5] Cf. FIFTH GENERAL CONFERENCE OF THE LATIN AMERICA AND CARIBBEAN BISHOPS, Aparecida Document (29 June 2007), 530. [6] Cf. ibid., 531 [00062-EN.01] [ [Original text: Spanish] [Vatican-provided text of Pope’s prepared speech] © Libreria Editrice Vaticana

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rilenerocks · 5 years

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The other day I exchanged messages with a friend I’ve never seen. We met in an online Merkel Cell cancer support group. Her husband was a decade younger than Michael when he was diagnosed with Merkel, in his early fifties. The course of his disease was short, less than a year and a half from discovery to death. I got banned from that support group after being in it for a little over a week. I was bringing up questions about emotional issues rather than just talking about the nuts and bolts of the disease and its possible treatments. After I was kicked out, this friend begged the administrators for my email address and we’ve been corresponding ever since. The anniversary of her husband’s death was last week and I always check in with her on that day. I expressed my hope that she was getting along well and had found some space for small joys in her life. When she answered, I felt like she was troubled by her current emotional state. She wrote that we’d both had wonderful experiences in our marriages but that now we had to learn how to live again in real time. That caught me up short.

Live in real time? I’ve been living about as hard in real time as a person can, in my opinion. Since Michael’s death, I’ve traveled alone several times, organized my 50th high school reunion and seen my favorite tennis player, Roger Federer, twice in real life tournaments for the very first time. I’ve been to half a dozen music concerts from John Prine to Pete Yorn to Janis Ian and Paul McCartney, among others.

I swim five days a week. I go to movies and have joined a book club. I’m going to serve on my city’s historic preservation committee. I’ve taken a number of classes, had both my knees replaced and knocked many items off my to-do list. Isn’t this living in real time? I think what she meant was that my constant emotional engagement with Michael means I’m living in the past. But that’s simply not true for me. Our long and deep emotional connection is still alive in me. He’s only been gone a tiny percentage of the time we were together. And he’s not going anywhere, not out of my head or my heart or my soul.

But that seems to be a point of contention in regard to how people are “supposed” to be after a death. Michael isn’t in my way in terms of daily life. I am. He doesn’t interfere with what I do. He didn’t when he was alive either. And that’s the way it is. I thought to myself, this exchange is another case of more and less, the story of my life. I am always talking about the things which are “more” while many around me could do with a little “less.”

I certainly know more now about lots of things than I ever have in my life. And that “knowing” is not yet close to its endpoint. I’m learning every day. I’ve always been learning. I’m motivated. As long as my brain is healthy I expect I’ll continue increasing my stash of both useful and useless facts and ideas. I retain volumes of it, stuffed in the corners of my mind. And I like to talk about it all. In traditional terms that seems ok. Certain areas of my conversation are acceptable. For example there are topics which are nice and neutral. There’s gardening. Sometimes there’s politics, although I can’t say I’m exactly neutral in that regard. But there’s school. This fall I’m taking three classes. One is about current affairs in the Horn of Africa about which I know very little. Another focuses on Persia and Rome and will feature readings from Herodotus. I’ve always wanted to read Herodotus, especially after watching the smolderingly sexy Ralph Fiennes carrying around a battered leather copy of his histories in the film The English Patient. The third is about early Scottish history. I know a little bit about that, but after watching the Outlander television series with the equally smoldering Sam Heughan, (who just happens to look like my husband when he was young,) I figured it couldn’t hurt to learn more. I’m a curious mixture of intellectual and pop culture knowledge – I can disappear into the classics world and pop back into current entertainment pretty seamlessly.

I was taking biology classes for a time during the past couple of years. Another socially acceptable conversation topic. But the science class offerings this fall weren’t that interesting to me this semester and frankly, I’ve got enough cancer stuff happening in real life without exploring more theory right now. Fucking cancer. I know several people who are actively engaged in their cancers, some of which are new and others which are old pals that lay dormant for a long time before reappearing in new places to create havoc. Now I’m moving into the “more” arena. This is where things get uncomfortable in my world. For example, I think that the majority of people who live for a long while will get cancer. We actually have it every day, mutations that crop up at the genetic level but are squashed and eliminated by healthy immune systems. That is, until the mutations get tougher or the immune system gets weaker. After all my years of reading, that’s what I’ve concluded. Some treatments buy time. Others are still primitive. You don’t get to know whose body will react poorly or positively to what is attempted. Until there are wholly individual treatments that’s the way it’ll be. So where does that take me? I try to be a helper and do what I can for those I know.

I think about myself too. I have no idea when my turn might come. I think a lot about the advocacy I was able to provide for my family and most especially my husband. Will I be able to advocate well for myself if necessary? That’s one question I have no answers for at this point. I think about this stuff a lot and I try talking about it but my kids don’t like it and some friends are taken aback. They say what I know they intend to be nice, defusing comments that move rapidly away from the morbid topics. I guess that having thought about death for all the years during Michael’s illness, coupled with my longheld death anxiety from my childhood, as I watched my mom go in and out of hospitals, has locked me into what some think is the morbid side of life. To me it’s more practical than morbid. But it’s one of “those” topics that I tend to bring up that is off-putting to a lot of people. When I talk about it I’m not sad or scared or maudlin. I’m just wondering. Death is something that will happen to everyone and pondering it doesn’t stop me from living a reasonably positive daily life. But the death arena fits into the “too much” category.

The issue of my feeling Michael’s presence so often is another “more” topic. I guess it makes some people uncomfortable. Maybe they think I’m nuts. Maybe they think I’m not living a healthy life. I don’t view other people’s opinions as my problem. I’m open to sharing but am also aware that red flags pop up when I start waxing eloquent about my “ghost.” I can feel that it’s time to move on to something else, a subject more palatable for whomever is the listener. It seems that I’ve always brought up issues that no one wants to talk about. Michael used to say that if I would only be quiet about certain topics life would be perfect. But I never believed anything was really perfect. Rather, I thought that if you kept working on problems or disturbing ideas like death, or basically anything that caused people psychological discomfort, that the process itself was almost more important than the end goal. I really enjoy thinking and discussing and sorting through virtually everything. I always thought that the more I knew about any issue, the better off I’d be. Michael, more reserved and less prone to the deep inward dives I do, loved me enough to go outside his comfort zone, sometimes kicking and screaming, into places he’d rather have ignored. In the end these explorations brought us incredibly close and gave us the stamina to go through our personal challenge that ended with his death. But what’s perfectly clear to me is that a lot of people prefer doing with less of these internal explorations into what I think are life’s and death’s fascinating mysteries. So when I bluntly bring up one of the off-limits topics, I’ll often feel the invisible hand up in my face and I know I’m supposed to be quiet. Despite the fact that I think we humans share a considerable amount of commonality in life’s essential business, talking about those things out loud just doesn’t happen enough for my taste.

There are all kinds of self-help books and advice websites about virtually everything. But say I decide to open up a sex conversation? Lots of people cut me off fast. I want to talk about how dreadful it feels for me to acknowledge that this most essential part of my life is over. I know that because I’m completely uninterested in being with anyone but Michael. But my drive isn’t dead. I’m going to miss intimacy and kissing and being touched in the way you build with bonds with another person for as long as I remain cognitive. But that’s a “less” conversation. I often wonder what other people feel and if they’re still sexually engaged but I rarely talk about this stuff because it feels like I’m crossing a social boundary line. Maybe I am.

I just think there’s comfort in sharing information and feelings that to me, must be widespread across our species. Am I outrageous? I guess some people might think that. But to me, I’m just myself. I’m still struggling with the separateness that I feel when shut down by the unwritten rules of social exchange. I just can’t stand all these implicit boundaries. Still, I have to live in the culture I occupy so I mostly abide them. More and less. Death and illness and sex are apparently for my private ruminations except for a very few people who accept me for who I am. With the others I guess I can talk about taxes and the weather. I’m glad I still feel Michael so strongly inside me. I can still talk to him about anything and he knows I’m living in real time. With a vengeance. Another thing he always told me was that he thought I was very polite to ask him his opinion on an issue when we both knew I would do exactly what I wanted to no matter what he thought. Still valid. Ultimately, I really don’t care what anyone thinks about my choices. But I’m pretty sure they’d like them if they gave me a chance to say more.

More and Less The other day I exchanged messages with a friend I’ve never seen. We met in an online Merkel Cell cancer support group.

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clarkphilholmes-blog · 5 years

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Life is short

So, why waste it by complaining on social media. On my tombstone, I would like it to read “Here lies Clark. He complained a lot on social media.” Do you know someone who complains a lot? Do you like hanging out with that person? Do your conversations consist of “Hey, nice complaint. Do you want to hear my complaint?” Do you go up to random people who you overhear saying something you disagree with, and be like “Hey you stupid fascist libtard shut the fuck up Nazi socialist idiot!,” and then recruit a hundred other people to walk up to that person’s table and start shouting “Nazi, nazi, nazi, nazi, nazi!,” and then petition the restaurant owner to ban that person from the restaurant?

I don’t know why they call it “social” media, because it is so vehemently anti-social, and promotes anti-social behavior and societal chaos. It encourages people to be distant from each other, be distracted all the time thinking about what their next post is going to be, or how their pages are performing, and encourages the same types of solipsistic interactions in reality that people engage in online.

So let’s just get rid of social media because it’s bad and stupid and technology sucks. We would be living in a better world if there were no computers, cars, telephones, or spring mattresses, and we could hunt for food instead of eating processed, inorganic foods made with chemicals. I could live in a lean-to in the woods and live my truth, because at root I am just a primitive animal and this digital world alienates me from who I really am, which is why I am anxious all the time and fantasize about killing myself or killing people in public places. It’s all the Internet’s fault, and it’s technology, and it’s destroying our planet, and we need to do something to stop it! Everyone who is reading this, turn off your computers and cell phones, buy a tent, bring along a survival manual, and leave all this superficial crap behind.

Because that’s what Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber said, exactly in his Manifesto.

I would invite you people to stop being so negative and so critical of everything all the time. No one wants to read your 300th post about the latest thing that’s trending in politics. The content is so bad on social media that I prefer to look at the ADS! I’ve noticed the same thing on television, too. I look forward to the ads when I’m watching TV now, because the content is so awful. Everyone is trying to shove some political value down your throat, everything is didactic, everything has some hidden, or not so hidden message in it, and I am sick of it, Plain fucking sick of it. The film industry is committing suicide because of this- no one wants to see the latest propaganda film disguised as a comic book adventure. The media is appealing to less and less reasonable people, and the entire media industry, not just online, but social media, television, cinema, newsmedia, books, art, all of it, is being strangulated by shameless didacticism. Our culture is being extirpated.

What we need is fewer amateurs and more professionals. We need less didacticism and dogmatism, and more open debate and civil discussion. We need objectivity. We need humor and satire that doesn't result in tragedy and chaos. We need content that doesn’t always challenge or support our political belief systems. We need non-political content that doesn't involve FUCKING CATS, which is just political symbolism anyway. We need SOMETHING other than this.

Culture is our primary tool of survival. It is where innovation and adaptation is given birth. We need ideas, productivity, spirituality, ethics, morals, all the foundations of human civilization to survive in this world, and adapt to the devastating changes that we are now facing. How will we survive climate change? By killing the economy, making people starve to death, and ceasing human activity? That is a wonderful final solution.

Human beings are the most adaptive species on the planet, possibly in the whole universe, and there is no situation or problem on Earth that is too great for us to handle, nor is there any problem that we as a human society have not imagined and manifested through our actions. The only way we can solve any of these problems is if we preserve our culture. A culture based on nihilism is doomed to suffer the consequences of its own philosophy: annihilation. A world without morals, spirituality, manners, decency, civility, is not a world that I want to live in, and it is not a world that human beings can survive in, either.

I am not a scientist or politician or a businessman or inventor. I am a student of literature and rhetoric, so I can only propose a solution that I have some knowledge in. It can start with our words, and how we express ourselves in public and private places, and how we treat other people, online or in person, as these two worlds are rapidly merging. It can start with just being human and civil, whether you are talking to a friend, or responding to a blog post. I will be revising my own behavior online, as I am doubtless an offender, having been sucked in by the mores of Internet culture like everyone else. We should create new mores and group objectives, other than ripping ourselves apart at every opportunity.

#globalwarming #conservative #democrat #republican #usa #liberal #socialist #art #culture #socialmedia #technology #internet #morality #survival #politics #philosophy #communication

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escapedreplicant · 7 years

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2001: A Space Odyssey

Been a while since I blogged. Anyway, after watching 2001: A Space Odyssey I had an urge to do so. It’s a spectacular film with that type of effect. It has also been number two on my list of ten science-fiction films that define the genre. It has done more than just define a genre it has also inspired several film-makers and some of it’s DNA can be felt in films like Under the Skin and Interstellar as well as scenes being given the pop-culture treatment of The Simpsons (Homer’s Blue Danube munching crisps in space scene).

So where do you begin in discussing a film that has had an emphatic impact on more than just science-fiction cinema? Well, the best place to begin is with the emptiness of space. That opening shot of a black expanse, defined by nothing other than the edges of the screen but it’s depth, it could go on for infinity. Before life there was only the void. The beginnings of a score strike up, what seems like background noise at first, becomes a tornado before it tails off and the opening credits appear and that imagery of the Earth, the moon, the sun and space all in alignment, as though a momentous event is occurring. Momentous might be the best word to describe the film. My own, specific, love of 2001: A Space Odyssey comes from the distinct acts that comprise the film beginning with The Dawn of Man.

The shots could be taken from a nature documentary of some type, those beautiful, expansive vistas, the Martian-esque landscape, the sun hanging in the sky or hovering just above a plateau. What this segment makes me think of though, is how man’s nature is cyclical. We are introduced to a tribe of our descendants, they move among four-legged beasts. Then one of their number is killed by a leopard. A food chain has now been established. We have not yet evolved to the stage where this monster can be confronted. This echoes later in the shot of the leopard over a felled zebra. Then there is a confrontation over a resource; the water pool. Two separate groups of apes screeching representing our base tribalism, over a shared resource, and escaping a shared threat. Our ancestors huddle together in the cold, blue night. The leopard can be heard in the distance, we have established that we are without invention at this point.

Then; the monolith. The screaming and screeching voices, that aggressive and troubling score as though voices are communicating through the monolith to us. That split image of the sun and moon above the ridge of the monolith, that reoccuring image of celestial bodies in alignment that is commonplace throughout the film. The apes touch and move around the monolith, it is almost worshipful. Are they paying tribute or merely in awe? Following this encounter there is invention as an ape discovers they can use a bone as a club and proceeds to smash the remaining skull and bones of a creature, all this beautifully intercut between images of felled beasts and meat being shared amongst the tribe. How does this invention end? By the violent taking of a resource by smashing the skull of another ape. War. Superiority has been achieved. Mankind will repeat this process exponentially over the coming centuries.

This segment alone gives me pause but then Kubrick ends this violent flurry and foreboding message with the most beautiful of transitions as the most primal of inventions is thrown into the air before becoming a drifting spaceship. An expanse of centuries beautifully cut through, connecting our most humble of beginnings with the most aspirational of our futures. There is an elegance and a gentile nature to the floating of the items in space accompanied by the Blue Danube, giving the journey an element of playfulness. There is even a wheel present. What could be considered our first invention, that helped us traverse the world is now sent into space helping us greet new horizons.

The production design across the upcoming scenes is spectacular. From the Panam flight attendant’s grip shoes to the video screens on the back of each seat. Then Kubrick creates an intense and amazing scale as the circular space station and the shuttle spin in tandem to the beautiful movement, like a dance, marrying artistry and machinery. The quality of the production design and the forecasting of future technology goes further as we are met with voice identification, picture phones all among beautifully clean, antiseptic floors. Such is the quality of what has gone before that only now, in the conversation with the Russian scientists, are we given any semblance of narrative.

This scene alone is telling given the film was made during the Cold War, Russians and Americans have respective bases on the moon and an oversight committee of some nature exists with laws enacted to ensure cooperation. Science-fiction often tells us so much about the times we live in, whether in the past or in the future it seems. The zero gravity toilet is a lovely nod to Kubrick’s inclusion of the location within his films, in the future many defining moments will be made in bathrooms. One thing I love is how loosely the narrative hangs over the film, the monolith was “deliberately buried” adding a further element of mystery to the proceedings following the conversation about what has occurred at the moon base. The journey to the monolith itself is accompanied by a haunting and foreboding score. There are some things man was never meant to know, perhaps if we are alone in the universe is one of those things. So we are greeted with another monolith, or the same monolith, the same noise rises up, apes still gather around it, more advanced but no less curious and the Earth hangs in the background before…the shriek. A screeching that gives me chills to this day.

Now, we get to meet HAL.

Jupiter Mission starts with a beautiful and slow shot of the elongated ship moving through space, comprised of carriages almost, like a train on an interstellar journey. My favourite shot of the film has to be the running scene. It is genius. The motion and control of the scene is still as striking to me today as it was when I first saw the film years ago. To me, it is evidence of a genius filmmaker at work, which Kubrick was.

There are countless films and TV programmes that have paid tribute to that menacing red eye and the hollow voice that accompanies it. There is a very common trope in science-fiction cinema of androids, robots or replicants breaking down or becoming self-aware, or finishing humanity’s job by wiping us off the face of the planet but, for me, none are more terrifying than HAL, because he has the most human of traits; a survival instinct. His logic is twisted and terrifying and all too relatable as he handles the flight or fight situation of being disconnected the only way possible, by removing human error from the equation.

The lip reading scene has forever troubled me, as this silent red light is more capable than any of the crew have been able to realise.

INTERMISSION (Just like the film).

The slow turning of the pod when Frank goes out to replace the AE35 unit is chilling, as seconds later he is thrust into Dave’s field of vision, hurtling through space grasping at the oxygen cable on the back of the suit. As Dave rushes out to secure Frank’s body HAL “malfunctions” causing the remaining crew in cryosleep to die. Any person who has difficulty with any technology often cribs the line; “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.” At least I know I have on occasion.

HAL is self-aware, and very much in the spirit of self-preservation takes the most direct and most violent course of action available to him. If we create artificial intelligence to mimic human intelligence then this is going to be a logical end point. I would argue that their is a symmetry to the flight or fight instinct in the shots of HAL locking Dave out of the ship and in the scene of Dave risking his life to blow into the airlock to stop HAL. We are then treated to a terrifying rendition of Daisy as HAL is reconfigured and I am convinced this is the reason so many horror movies now insist on having a children’s nursery rhyme sang in a slow voice in their trailers.

We are then returned to the narrative in the form of the message. I love that there is no complex mechanical plot pulling 2001: A Space Odyssey along. This is most evident in The Dawn of Man and in Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite. Many a night have ai lay awake in bed and tried to perceive what Dave was trying to perceive in his journey. Those bright, vivid colours, blurring images, landscapes cycling through bizarre colour patterns, the nature of reality beyond the expanse. I have often thought that this symbolic of Dave being unabl to perceive what the universe is telling him, his all too primitive brain struggling to comprehend existence in its most raw state. This is why it ends with the continual blinking of his eye through the colour patterns until finally a construct has been formed which he can understand. A room. Walls, doors, a bed, chairs. A toilet at the edge of time and space. Then there are the three versions of Dave. Aged within his space suit, eating dinner and drawing his last breath. I have always envisaged this as what our perception of life outside of time to be like, in that we are viewing the versions of ourself in a format in which we understand. To us, time is linear, so it would make sense to see ourselves age to the point we are watching ourselves draw our last breath.

The metaphysical ending as the monolith enters the room and the baby watches over the Earth has no doubt inspired conversations of such nature amongst many. Personally, I could talk about 2001: A Space Odyssey for hours. I consider it to be a seminal text in the genre of science-fiction and one of the greatest films made by a genius filmmaker who was versatile enough to give us films like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Doctor Strangelove and Ths Shining. His impact and the film’s should never be understated.

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ikkinthekitsune · 7 years

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Original Sin, Rene Girard, and the Crucifixion

A little over four years ago, I speculated that Original Sin -- the figurative consumption of the Fruit of the Knowledge of Good and Evil -- could be best understood as a direct consequence of knowing good and evil.

A limited human being who knows good and evil, I reasoned, would inevitably believe themselves to be inadequate and insufficient, and their attempts to hide that inadequacy and insufficiency would inevitably result in sin (i.e. failure, error, "missing the mark").

I was reminded of this because I'd been reading about Rene Girard's theories regarding mimetic desire and the scapegoat mechanism, and it seemed like the two concepts could synthesize together very well.

For Girard, imitation is critical to human behavior:

"There is nothing, or next to nothing, in human behaviour that is not learned, and all learning is based on imitation. If human beings suddenly ceased imitating, all forms of culture would vanish."

While humans, like other animals, possess appetites and instincts, those elements alone explain very little about human behavior. Even the means by which we fulfill our appetites -- say, the foods we eat -- are largely determined by the ways in which we understand our peers to fulfill them.

Why do we copy others so much? According to Girard,

"[A person] desires being, something he himself lacks and which some other person seems to possess. The subject thus looks to that other person to inform him of what he should desire in order to acquire that being. If the model, who is apparently already endowed with superior being, desires some object, that object must surely be capable of conferring an even greater plenitude of being."

Essentially, we copy the desires of others in an attempt to define ourselves, because others appear to have the sort of stable identity which we ourselves lack.

Or, in other words, we don't, in fact, "know good and evil." We just copy others who seem to have a better handle on things in an attempt to fulfill a desire for being -- for identity -- that such mimicry can never fulfill.

Instincts and appetites can be satisfied. The desire for being can't, at least not by anything within this world. But still, we imitate others in hopes that, by doing so, we'll finally find a way to fill the black hole of inadequacy and insufficiency we feel as a result of our lack of being.

To make matters worse, imitation, which can be harmless or even good under other circumstances, becomes dangerous when aimed at a human model. We don't simply want stuff because we think stuff will fulfill us (though that's still a problem, both because it doesn't work and because there's a finite amount of stuff to fill an inherently limitless need). We are specifically drawn to the stuff other people already want:

"In all the varieties of desire examined by us, we have encountered not only a subject and an object but a third presence as well: the rival. [...] [T]he rival desires the same object as the subject. [...] [T]he subject desires the object because the rival desires it."

We can't just sit in our own corners collecting stuff that might give us temporary satisfaction if not ultimate fulfillment. Our instinctual drive to imitate others constantly drives us into conflict with others by manufacturing scarcity where none previously existed. In rejecting the (infinite, loving, non-rivalrous) model we were made to imitate and imitating other humans, then, violence becomes inevitable.

"If two friends imitate each other’s desire, they both desire the same object. And if they cannot share this object, they will compete for it, each becoming simultaneously a model and an obstacle to the other. The competing desires intensify as model and obstacle reinforce each other, and an escalation of mimetic rivalry follows; admiration gives way to indignation, jealousy, envy, hatred, and, at last, violence and vengeance."

And, according to Girard, our human tendency towards imitation both makes violence itself contagious and tends towards a rather horrifying resolution:

"When scandals proliferate, human beings become so obsessed with their rivals that they lose sight of the objects for which they compete and begin to focus angrily on one another. As the borrowing of the model’s object shifts to the borrowing of the rival’s hatred, acquisitive mimesis turns into a mimesis of antagonists. More and more individuals polarize against fewer and fewer enemies until, in the end, only one is left. Because everyone believes in the guilt of the last victim, they all turn against him -— and since that victim is now isolated and helpless, they can do so with no danger of retaliation. As a result, no enemy remains for anybody in the community. Scandals evaporate and peace returns—for a while.

"Society’s preservation against the unlimited violence of scandals lies in the mimetic coalition against the single victim and its ensuing limited violence."

Society can’t allow itself to recognize the true nature of its scapegoats, however. Everyone has to believe that the last victim is guilty, so myths arise to confirm the guilt of the victim and the necessity of the murder to avert the judgment of the gods.

This, then, is the depravity that lies at the heart of human nature -- that the kingdoms of this world can only be maintained through the ritual slaughter of the scapegoats whose blood purchases a temporary peace for the rest of society, and that we lie to ourselves about this murder in order to ensure that future coalitions against scapegoats will remain complete.

In Girard's interpretation, then, the Crucifixion of Jesus can be understood in an entirely human context. While it's possible to squish it into the scapegoat mold by saying, "Jesus might not have been guilty, but he accepted punishment on behalf of those who were and therefore satisfied God’s need for justice," doing so robs it of its most critical insight:

"Instead of blaming victimization on the victims, the Gospels blame it on the victimizers. What the myths systematically hide, the Bible reveals.

"This difference is not merely “moralistic” (as Nietzsche believed) or a matter of subjective choice; it is a question of truth. When the Bible and the Gospels say that the victims should have been spared, they do not merely “take pity” on them. They puncture the illusion of the unanimous victimization that foundational myths use as a crisis-solving and reordering device of human communities."

In other words, we were "ransomed from the futile ways inherited from [our] ancestors" not by God paying off a figurative or literal kidnapper to free us (as if He had to!) but by Jesus offering a much greater ransom than the system could possibly sustain. The brutal and unjust death of an innocent man-who-is-God who thereafter refuses to stay dead irreparably damages the scapegoat mechanism; such a ransom is given for the express purpose of consuming the captor.

And, if that's the case -- if injustice is built on scapegoating (perhaps not all-on-one but rather majority-on-minority) and the Cross exposes scapegoating for what it is -- then the Cross might be one of the most powerful tools against injustice at humanity's disposal. You can't victim-blame a victim who a third of the world sees as the omni-benevolent incarnation of God. You can't write off scapegoating as the realm of primitive religion when the Crucifixion was carried out by the agents of an empire whose own motives had nothing to do with their religion.

The Crucifixion is, effectively, a divine act of protest designed to convict the collective conscience of humanity and push us to create a society that isn't founded on the blood of scapegoats. In a lot of ways, it's been successful. In a lot of ways, we've sought to bury it to protect our own interests. But a civilization that exists in its shadow can't help but be affected by it... or by acts of protest that hearken back to it.

It’s frustrating that some of the loudest voices claiming to speak for Christianity are oblivious to much of the scapegoating that exists in our society. Even so, the Crucifixion offers a common point of reference that can be used to convict them.

Rene Girard was pessimistic about the future of humanity. He thought that, as soon as the scapegoating mechanism was revealed and hence broken, unanimous rejection of mimetic desires became the only way to avoid apocalypse. But I'd argue that revealing the scapegoat mechanism was not, in fact, a fatal blow to scapegoating, and much of what’s wrong with the world today is the result of better-hidden scapegoating. As such, there are a number of things we can do to combat continued scapegoating that that would make this world a better place.

My generation may no longer find value in an omnipotent Cosmic Santa Claus, but there's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. This world will always need the witness of an innocent victim to put the lie to the assumption that the people whose blood we use to lubricate the gears of society deserve what they get... and it will always need an infinite, non-rivalrous model to imitate for those of us thus convicted.

#Christianity #Rene Girard #Original Sin

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