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vgckwb · 3 years

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P5R: Rebel Girl (A FeMC Story/P5R Rework) Chapter 45: Old Wounds

Ren was a little anxious waiting on the confession. Yusuke had been keeping them updated about Madarame’s condition, and it seemed good, but Madarame was old. She was worried that all of this might have put too much strain on him, and he couldn’t handle it. Then again, if he had the power to abuse his students, maybe he could make it though.

Still, he felt best to alleviate some of her worries by going to talk to Dr. Maruki about her concerns, both in and out of the metaverse. She shot him a message first, in case anyone else had plans to see him.

Ren: Hey doc, are you available?

Dr. Maruki: The coast is clear.

Ren: OMW then.

She headed over. Once she got there, she knocked on the door. “Come in,” Maruki instructed. Ren walked in. “Have a seat.” Ren did so. “What’s on your mind?”

Ren put her head in her hands. “Well, right now I’m just a bit worried.”

“How come?” Maruki asked.

“Well, it’s just our latest target…” Ren responded.

“Ah yes, I heard about that,” Maruki said. “Madarame, huh. I would never have guessed.”

“Well, it’s becoming more and more apparent to me that not everything is as it seems,” Ren said.

“True” Maruki retorted. “So, what’s the issue then?

“Well, I’m just worried that because of Madarame’s advanced age, the combined stress of almost having his palace taken over and his treasure stolen, it might just be too much for him,” Ren explained.

“I see,” Maruki said. “While it is true that your emotional standing can take a toll on one’s physical health, I don’t think there’s too much to worry about.” Ren looked up. “Remember, the shadows are incomplete, and that includes the shadows of those who have palaces. So, them losing their palace and treasure is more akin to them running out of steam. So long as someone is taking care of him, he should be fine.”

“Hm,” Ren said. “He should be fine then.”

“Well, that sure seems quick,” Maruki said. “Is there anything else you’d like to talk about? How are you outside of being a Phantom Thief?”

Ren seemed a little puzzled. “Fine enough, I guess.”

“Well, you certainly are a strong one,” Maruki remarked.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ren asked, slightly indignant.

“Well, it’s just, not a lot of people would say they’re fine after getting falsely accused of assault,” Maruki noted.

Ren sort of pouted. “I guess that’s true.” There was a bit of silence. Ren sighed. “I’ve sort of noticed that Tokyo has changed me.”

“In what ways?” Maruki asked.

“Well, for starters, I have friends now, '' Ren said. She then realized what she had said. She panicked for a second, but decided to keep going. “Back home, I never really connected with anyone. Well, maybe when I was younger. But as things changed, no one really wanted to be friends with me.”

“I see,” Maruki observed. “Might I ask, how did you make your first friend in Tokyo?”

Ren looked at him. “Well, that, um…” She took a deep breath. “On my first day at school, I came across Ann at a crosswalk. Then Kamoshida pulled over and invited Ann in the car. He invited me as well, and we both agreed to it. I went solely to make sure Ann was alright.”

“Hm,” Maruki said, jotting things down. “So, you didn’t know her, but you wanted to keep her safe?”

Ren looked at him. “That’s right. And then when we got out, we just stuck together for the rest of the day. Well, except for when Ann had to use the bathroom. And just my luck, Kamoshida called me to his office then.”

“Oh my” Maruki said, surprised. “What happened then?”

“He tried to make a move on me,” Ren said. “But before anything could happen, Ann came in and took me out of there.”

“Hm. Well, that certainly was lucky, don’t you think?” Maruki asked.

“I guess so,” Ren said.

“Sorry, but that wasn’t entirely the answer I was expecting,” Maruki said. “She saved you because you were friends, correct?”

Ren was shocked. “I guess. But I don’t think Ann was just returning the favor. She felt really bad about not telling me about Kamoshida before that happened.”

“Hm. It seems like you have all the pieces, but you’re having trouble putting them into place” Maruki said.

Ren was confused. “I don’t suppose you have an answer then.”

“I may,” Maruki said. “But let’s see if you can’t find an answer first.” Ren thought for a moment. “If I may, let’s jog that thought process. What do you suppose would happen if you hadn’t met up with Ann but were still called to Kamoshida’s office?”

“I’m not sure,” Ren responded. “I’m not sure what would have happened between me and Kamoshida had Ann not interrupted.”

Maruki laughed. “Sorry, but you sort of touched on the answer.” Ren was perplexed. “You’re wondering what would have happened if Ann hadn’t shown up. But that’s not what I asked.” Ren was surprised. “All I asked was ‘What would happen if you hadn’t met Ann, but Kamoshida called out to you?’ Nowhere in that scenario does it state that Ann wouldn’t come.” Ren was shocked. “I think we’re sort of getting to the heart of the issue.”

“And that would be?” Ren inquired.

Maruki gave a serious look. “It’s hard for you to accept kindness at face value.” Ren was stunned. “This is just a hypothesis, but I’m guessing that due to that lack of connection you talked about in your hometown, you’re not used to receiving kindness from others. So when it does happen, you’re not 100% sure how to handle it.”

en thought about this for a moment. “I’ve been told...similar things...recently… You’re good.”

“I didn’t go to college for nothing,” Maruki said.

“What do you suggest I do?” Ren asked.

Maruki paused. “Well, like most things, this isn’t an overnight fix. But I think this is a case for Ockham's Razor. You have friends now. You should work on accepting their kindness when it is offered.”

Ren seemed a bit disappointed in herself. “I guess that makes sense.” She sighed deeply.

“I guess that’s a bit harder than I thought,” Maruki reacted.

“No, it’s just…” Ren said. “I get what you’re saying, and I think I’ve been getting better at that, but after spending so long putting up walls, it’s hard to know how to take them down without breaking.”

Maruki clearly saw Ren was troubled. The idea that people would be nice to her without reason is something that rarely crossed her mind, and in turn it made her keep people at arm’s length. In an instant, Maruki decided to do something a bit drastic.

“...as Rumi” he said, seemingly randomly. Ren looked up at him, confusion strewn about her face. “‘I’m not as good a cook as Rumi.’ That’s what I was saying at the clean up.”

Ren was curious about this sudden topic shift, but decided to roll with it. “And, who is Rumi?”

“My ex-girlfriend,” Maruki stated.

“Oh” Ren said, trying not to push it.

“Heh,” Maruki chuckled, catching Ren’s attention. “Our break-up was a little unusual.” Tears started to stream down his eyes. “You see, we were engaged to be wed. However, fate can be cruel sometimes. Her family home was robbed, and her parents were murdered. She went into a catatonic shock, and fell into a coma.

I visited her every day in the hospital. I was at a point where I’d give anything to see her smile again. Fate can be funny too. I had been researching cognitive psience a bit, and in the moment I wished for anything to get Rumi back, she woke up. However, she had no idea who I was.

I think whatever power I had was starting to manifest. After she had woken up, the doctors had examined her. Her memory was scuffed, but she was Rumi all the same. However, I decided that if I were to stay in Rumi’s life, it would only serve to hurt her. So, we split up.

After that, I grew even more involved in my research. I was more dedicated than ever to use cognitive psience for good. To make sure no one had to suffer like Rumi did. And when that was taken away from me, my palace appeared. But that didn’t last either.”

Ren was awestruck. Maruki had just said a lot, all the while his eyes were flowing like a river. “Why did you tell me all of that?”

“Well,” Maruki began, tears still erupting from his eyes, “I figured I needed to lead by example.” Ren was a tad puzzled. “You were worried about how to be more accepting of kindness and changing how you relate to people without breaking. The answer to that is break. Breaking is good. It shows that you’re responding to someone’s honest feelings with honesty of your own.”

“And that’s why you decided to spill your guts about what happened to you?” Ren asked.

Maruki nodded. He took his glasses off, dried his eyes, and put his glasses back on. “To be honest, I’ve never really gotten past what happened with Rumi. And I guess that led to the creation of my palace. But now, I have to face it head on if I wanna get anywhere else. And I suggest you do the same. You’re probably stronger than I am, which is why you seemed to hold out in your sense of justice this entire time. But if you wish to let Tokyo mold you into the best person you can be, then it’s important to show weakness when needed.”

Ren nodded. “Right.”

Councilor-Takato Maruki: Rank 2

She got up and bowed. “Thanks doctor.”

She was about to leave, but before she could, Dr. Maruki called out “Wait!” she stopped. “Before you go, would you care for a snack?” Ren smiled and picked something out of his bowl of treats.

As Ren was heading out, eating her snack, Morgana popped out “Um, don’t take this the wrong way, but it seems like you were already doing the stuff Dr. Maruki suggested. So why thank him?”

“Well, it’s complicated,” Ren said, between bites. “It’s like when you have a question in your mind, and it’s plaguing your every thought, but when you say it out loud the answer is crystal clear. I might have been growing, but now I have more of an awareness of it. Does that make sense?”

“I guess,” Morgana said, a little embarrassed. “It’s like when you picked up on my crush on Lady Ann when I told you I only have the mission to think about.”

“There you go,” Ren said. She continued eating and heading out.

Later that night, she arrived at Untouchable. “Hey,” Iwai said.

“How’s business?” Ren asked.

“Business is going fine,” Iwai said. “But I’m also working on something.”

“I hope it’s more customizable parts,” Ren said.

Iwai grinned. “Ha. But no. I’m looking into the information we acquired from the diner the other day.”

“Oh” Ren said, deadpan.

Iwai looked forlorn. He sighed. “I guess I gotta tell ya. Otherwise things won’t make sense. At least, if things play out as expected. That guy, Masa, and the guy he was talking to, Tsuda. Back in the day, the three of us were mafia brethren.” Ren was a little stunned. “Back then, I was just a dumb kid lookin’ for a place to belong. And I found it. At least for a while.”

“What happened that you gave it up?” Ren asked.

“Well…” Iwai began.

The door then opened up. They looked over to see a boy a bit younger than Ren. “Hey” he said.

Iwai was a bit shocked. “What’d I tell you about coming here unannounced?”

The boy was stunned. “...Sorry.”

Iwai sighed. “No. I’m the one who’s sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you like that.”

The boy looked at Ren. “Who’s she?”

“She’s just some hired help,” Iwai explained.

The boy was surprised. “You hired someone?”

“Yeah, well…” Iwai lamented.

“That’s great!” the boy said. Iwai was surprised. “You've been stressed out lately, so it’ll help to have someone lighten the load.”

wai was still shocked. “Heh. Careful now. With thinking like that, if you start a business of your own, you might run me out.”

The boy’s face was now flush. “Aw stop. You’re embarrassing me.” He turned to Ren. “I’m Kaoru. Kaoru Iwai.”

Ren was a little surprised. “My son,” Iwai said, hoping to clarify, but only serving to confuse Ren some more. “He’s a third year in middle school.”

Kaoru nodded. “And what’s your name?”

Ren was still trying to process everything. Still, she composed herself and introduced herself. “Ren. Ren Amamiya. Second-year high schooler, and part time worker at your father’s store.”

“Wow,” Kaoru said. He bowed. “Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise” Ren said.

“So, what are you doing here anyways?” Iwai asked.

“Oh, right,” Kaoru said. “I’m wondering if you’ll be home for dinner tonight. I headed out shopping and was wondering if I needed to get enough food for the both of us, or just me.” Ren took note of that particular line.

Iwai checked his phone. “You say you just left to go shopping?” Kaoru nodded. “Alright. Get enough for both of us. I’ve gotta finish a few things around the shop, and then I’ll join you, and we can go home together.”

“Oh. OK” Kaoru said. He started to leave. “It was nice meeting you, Ren. Ah. I should be calling you ‘Ren-snepai’.” Ren blushed just a little. “See you later!” He left.

Iwai looked a mixture of relieved, disappointed, and amused. “So, what happened to Kaoru’s mom?” Ren asked.

Iwai was now more surprised than that strange trio of emotions he felt a second ago. He sighed. “Well, for starters, Kaoru isn’t my biological child” he began explaining. Ren felt confused, concerned, and weirdly, relieved. “Do you want the lie or the truth?”

“Both, if possible” Ren said, defaulting on her natural playfulness.

“Hm. Figures” Iwai said. “I told Kaoru, and pretty much everyone who doesn’t know me, that Kaoru’s parents died in a car crash, and I took him in. I figured something must have happened to him. When I first came across him, I noticed he had this scar shaped like a gecko.”

“You mean, like yours?” Ren asked.

“Well, that came after,” Iwai said. “I got it to show solidarity with Kaoru. It’s like a family crest.”

“Softie” Ren teased.

Iwai smiled, unable to deny that. He grew serious again. “What really happened was that Kaoru’s birth mom came to some of us in the Yakuza asking to sell Kaoru for drug money. When we said no, she just left him there. I decided to take care of him then. And that meant going on the straight and narrow.”

Ren was surprised. “Damn and I thought you were a softie with the lie.”

“Heh” Iwai grunted. “I just figured that this kid needed a fighting chance.”

Ren rolled her eyes. “So, Kaoru doesn’t know you are ex-yakuza?” Iwai shook his head. “Why not tell him?”

“Because…” Iwai said. “I don’t want him being dragged down by me. I know my parents never gave enough of a shit about me, so I’m trying to give enough of a shit about him. If he finds out I was a mafia guy, he’ll know I’m a failure, and all of that will go down the drain.”

“I still think you should consider it,” Ren said. “If you’re so worried about him finding out via him walking in, it might be better to explain it on your own terms.”

Iwai thought about it. “Maybe. But he’s got a lot to focus on right now. I don’t wanna drag him down when he needs to focus on things like high school entrance exams.”

“I guess that’s fair” Ren said. “But maybe you should tell him before things get out of hand.”

Iwai sighed. “You’re probably right, but I have my own hang ups.”

“That’s fine,” Ren said. “I’m not hang up free either, so I get it.”

Iwai smiled. “And you call me a softie.”

“What can I say? Birds of a feather…” Ren noted. Iwai got a good chuckle out of that.

Hanged Man-Munehisa Iwai: Rank 3.

“Anyways, you should get going,” Iwai said. “In case you forgot, I've gotta get home for dinner.”

“Right” Ren nodded. She gleefully left the store and went back to Leblanc.

#persona 5 #persona fanfiction #persona 5 royal #p5r #p5 femc #p5 rework #p5r rework #p5 #FeMC #female ren #ren amamiya #dr maruki #morgana #iwai munehisa #iwai kaoru

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csa-survivor-confessions · 4 years

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(1/2)🐛? (on mobile cant find your faq sorry) My mom raped me for years and i recently escaped now that im 18. I didnt remember the sexual abuse when i made the decision to leave but i randomly realized it a few months later. I have found little support and therapy for an hour a week is all i can afford but is not enough. I am at the end of my rope with my trauma and DID and i dont know what to do. The biggest issue is the overwhelming shame, and feeling like i deserved it.

(2/2)🐛 I keep falling into saying it didn't happen/wasn't that bad/others had it worse to the point I get sick when I deny it too much. An alter keeps saying the rest of us are lying and mom is a good person and we should go back. I feel like I made everything up because I read a lot of noncon fic to try to punish myself. Every grounding technique I have tried has failed. Sorry, I know this is a lot. Any resources for female survivors of maternal incest? Or any advice at all? I feel so alone.

Hello,

I’ll separate this into parts to hopefully help with converting clear information.

Denial, believing it’s fake.

Fake memories, or just “made up” memories do not happen commonly, [information here The False Memory Myth & Memory Repression]. there is nothing wrong with feeling that way however, self-denial and downplaying of our one trauma is really common.

Having “denial of parts/alters” is really common. I personally have DID as well and we have alters who deny our abuse, blame our abuse or have a deep attachment to our abusers. That is so normal! You are not alone, In this struggle. If you have any internal communication you can talk to the other alters who share this trauma for support these internal connection are god for recovery.

If you have the stability or any parts wh are good at working with there might also am them why they feel the need to defend the mother. communicating can also help ease your feeling of overwhelming and denial.

One key way to help with downplaying of abuse is to imagine a friend came to you and told you what happened to you happened to them. And think about what you would tell them, I bet it’s not. “it wasn’t bad” or “well other people got it worse”.

When you have worked out the kind of compassionate language, start picture the little girl inside you who went through the trauma. This can include talking to some of your young alters if you have any communication methods with them. Sometimes pulling them forward through focusing on your internal child might happen and sometimes those with DID can access the internal child through more basic IFS (internal family system) and Part Work methods. And offer them compassion for what they are going through.

Shame

When you find thoughts of shame start to spiral, not the thoughts and the feelings in your body. But then take a long breath and work to not identify with that thought. The emotion and thoughts exist but you don’t have t push yourself to think about it r feel it. Picture the emotion and try and let it pass.

Working towards self neutrality is also a good goal. Refraimging the language you use to talk about yourself, and in your case, your alters, to something that lacks overly negative connotation ill help change the schemas of shame. Coping Skills: Ditch Value judgments

Those words of compassion we talked about early when you find yourself starting to feel so down on yourself and shameful try saying these words to yourself. Along with some positive self aspirational mantras, you can help start to reshape the patterns your neurology follows. You won’t believe them at first but saying these will help with healing.

Practising good self-care can be super important. When we can treat our body with honesty and respect that helps shape our internal sense of being respected and being care for. It’s also just good for general depression and health. [Coping Skills Masterposts: Self-Care]

I know how hard things like showers can be but starting with just tooth brushing and face washing can be important. If brushing of teeth is a trigger I suggest buying a smaller toothbrush like a kids size and changing toothpaste to one tat either foams less, is another colour or if the taste carries. Using baby whips or a wet cloth to areas like the groin, armpits, under breasts and behind knees would be another important step towards overall health.

Keeping the living space as neat as possible also counteracts feelings of overwhelming shame and self-esteem issues.

The use of sexual material to cope

When we struggling to deal our tendency to self-harm is very common as it’s a maladaptive attempt to cope. Using the stories as a way to in your words punish is a form of self-injurious behaviour. Factors like lack of regulation, compulsive behaviour, intrusive thoughts and being manipulated by users to believing this is a reaction to perceived threats. [Coping Skills: Combating Self-Harm Urges]

This doesn’t invalidate abuse as having been abused is not contingent in never interacting with sexual content, up to and including having sex, afterwards. CSA often predates other unhealthy sexual behaviours as a reaction to our sexual traumas. No way our trauma reactions show mean our abuse didn’t happen or didn’t hurt us deeply.

Coping Skills

It makes sense a lot of the mainstream grounding is hard and lack effectiveness. Much of the meditative type skills intensify dissociation. We also often struggle with our automatic nervous systems being even more fractured than those with PTSD. Our neurological behaviour will also be more likely to take any stress or confusion and push us to dissociate. Visualization also tends to work poorly for many of us with dissociative disorders for the same issue of a tendency to dissociate. Focusing on a singular self to ground into can also become hard for us too and trigger depersonalization.

If there are skills you liked in theory and didn’t have direct negative effects it might be worth trying them again. I do understand the frustration I really really do but it can be worth it. especially as you learn what coping skills can work with different somatic sensations and cognitive distortions.

I would suggest using some of the most basic coping methods of deep breathing. I would guess this already takes a lot of brainpower as even basic things like breathing regularly can be hard for those who have extreme dissociation. So it takes a huge amount of practice for us and time for it to be effective but it’s so very important.

I would suggest still trying to practice focusing on our body sensations even if we don’t add the subsequent suggestions for grounding. Knowing what sensations tend to present themselves when certain stimuli and thoughts are present is really important for coping. It can be true that the coping skill you are working at isn’t addressing where you are. For examples, our nervous system can be in hyperarousal but many grounding skills counteract hyperarousal. So try and look for engagement over relaxation or visa versus.

I am a big believer in the body-mind connection and import of the brain-body connection and coping that is body focused. Cogntive skills like thought stopping and replacing can be truly helpful in the short term for trauma survivors.

Talk to your alters as well, coping can be influenced by the emotions land somatic states trauma we are carrying along with the ones within our consciousness. They might also just have opinions on what you ought to do. This can be done internally or through other means like writing notes.

Mother-daughter incest

I have found very little survivor orientated material that could be helpful, I found mostly news sources about how it exists and academic texts.

If any of our community knows of survivor focused materials for survivors of mother-daughter incest please reply or submit them.

We do have a discord that you could join and we have an incest support channel we are still growing the members of the server but it might be a place to have peer support.

Be Blessed,

-Admin 2

#ask #advice #coping skills #dissociative identity disorder #did #dissociation #incest cw #mother mention #rape cw #noncon mention #Anonymous

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coldfyr · 7 years

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Edit: it won't let me put this in normal title format, so:

Almost Peaceful

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Four thousand planets in the Great Unity. Six thousand sentient species, give or take. Technology so complicated it could only be repaired by crews with multiple different cognition types on the team. And that's not even mentioning the violent flare-ups that had brought the Great Unity down from eight thousand planets and fourteen thousand species. It was entirely understandable for the humans to be intimidated. But no, that wasn't quite it. To the species with similar intelligences and social structures, it almost seemed that the humans were embarrassed, of all things. But nobody paid them any mind. Their insistence on using the freely given technologies to outphase the signals that they had been broadcasting for cycles? Odd. Same with their social quarantining of all human history, and with the electromagnetic shielding of their quadrant. The only thing people really paid attention to was when this backwater nothing asked for the other species to delete the preliminary data gathered earlier. Some worlds balked at that, but this tiny, flimsy race was so obviously terrified that even the most predatory of the war races consented to the purge. It didn't really matter anyways - their quadrant, an even mix of death worlds and featureless rocks, was otherwise entirely empty of life, sentient or otherwise. The Alab were the first to realize how strange that had been. If humanity had then hidden itself away, kept from the rest of the universe, it would have been as expected (there were many shy, prey-evolved races), and they would have been ignored, as seemed their wish. But no. The flimsy bipeds built ships of their own, founded settlements on half a dozen worlds. And these places weren't shielded like Earthspace was; instead they were as obvious and unshielded as possible. Curious about the oddity - they were a plains evolution, so curiosity fit them - the Alab ventured as close as they could to the strange cities without being spotted, hidden beneath the best cloaking the Great Unity had to offer. As it turned out, they didn't need to hide. Partially because the Humans saw them, somehow, and partially because the Humans invited them down. By now the Alab's interest had attracted the attention of most of the Great Unity, who telepathically watched through the Alab sensory hearts as a world opened up around them. This colony was not the tarnished scar they would have expected of a nascent race. Even the planet was different from the dusty rock it had started as.

A cool breeze touched the Alab delegation. It was scented with so many things that, for a moment, the Alab was frozen in simply trying to process the variety. The variety, of course, came from the masterpiece of terraforming before them: where there were one craters, glittering pools shimmered with the reflective scales of aquatic creatures; the star-burnt ridges now housed both massive, rigid photosynthetic organisms and prancing furred quadrupeds.

Even that brief glimpse sparked massive speculation on the universal scale. Were the humans genetic engineers whose art surpassed even that of the Tra'di? Did their planet simply have that many organisms, with an evolutionary history far enough beyond anything seen elsewhere, to create such variety of perfectly proportioned life? Landscape designers hurriedly took notes and scans, preparing for the unavoidable rush of requests for the new style.

But that wasn't the mission, as stunning as the landscape was. The Alab turned around, clicking their hearts at the abrupt change in input. The city was massive, a gleaming wonder in stone and steel, somehow surpassing the crystal forests of the Mavse in elegance. The ships soaring through the skies above shone like the stars they sought, yet the Alab could pick out individual details on the designs adorning them. Not long after this event, other species began to visit Humanity's homes. Without fail, each and every one of them was uniquely beautiful. Their ships weren't the fastest, but one couldn't help but be impressed at their symmetry. Their music wasn't the most complex, but it often gave rise to more emotion than actual empathic abilities. And each colony had its own biome, its own set of unique species, each more impressive than the last.

Rumors began to grow, as they do, surrounding the home world of the greatest artists the universe had ever seen. Some said that it was drab, focused on training the artists they sent out rather than on making the art itself. Others declared that Earth obviously was a religious secret (they had found out that humans had religion only a few cycles earlier. Of course, their prayers and monuments were the most beautiful anyone had ever seen), but that was scoffed at. The sheer breadth of human religions wouldn't allow a decision that unified, the debaters pointed out, and at least one human would have given it away before now if it was something centered on faith. By far the most popular opinion was that even the most wondrous works on the colony worlds paled in comparison to the splendor of Earth. Tales spread, saying that anyone nonhuman who saw Earth in all its glory would be struck silent by awe, never to speak again, for fear of diminishing the memory of what they saw. That Earth was so wondrous that the colonists saw their own worlds, home to more abstract riches and honor than most of the rest of the universe, as hopelessly utilitarian, as gray and lifeless in comparison as Raner Alikrem to Ormek 8.

Over the Human cycles, Earth grew in fame and mystery. Despite taking advantage of every advancement shown to them, Humanity never once volunteered knowledge or technology beyond that of their art and culture. Nobody minded, though, as said art was definitely worth the cost. Humans got more and more famous, and continually better educated, as the Great Unity slowly funded and rewarded their astounding work. But they retained their peculiar aversions, never accepting any weapons, or training, or even remotely militant designs, acting almost horrified at the thought of violence. It made sense, in an odd way. The fragmentary human history that had been gathered from the occasional interview with the taciturn race was as pure as it came, one where even hinting at conflict would see one shunned. Traders and scholars learned this quickly, taking specialized training in avoiding the subject just to avoid scaring their precious artists. It was with this in mind that the Gald set out for Earth. They were one of the oldest species in the galaxy, and undoubtedly one of those for whom the times of peace chafed the most. It was in seeking both truth and conquest that they sent out their expeditionary force towards Earth. The logic was plain even to the most sedentary of species - if the most fascinating mystery in all the universe was being guarded by the eleventh most physically weak of the races, and the second least violent (the least being an immobile, telepathic cellscape that covered a small moon), then of course a predator-evolved race with an undeniable urge to spread their reach, grow their power, would eventually come after them.

The first fleet was more of a team of armed ambassadors than an armada. Even as they attacked, the Gald hoped to stay in Humanity's good graces. The Gald kept in careful contact with them up until the moment they crossed over into the shielded Earthspace. The first fleet was never heard from again. The Gald, logically assuming that some standard space disaster had befallen their fleet, sent another, this one with precautionary reconnaissance and messenger ships. Again, all was well up to the shielded space. The Gald, sure that the new fleet was safe from all but the strangest disasters, waited with bated breath for the return of the messenger ships.

The first one came back early, not only with a report from the fleet (no notable planets had been found yet, other than twelve deathworlds. The fleet continued its search for Earth), but with cargo. That was unexpected, to say the least. The messenger ships had been intended to fly back and forth across the shield, transmitting messages from one side to the other. That one had been used instead to transfer what looked like an derelict satellite meant that, whatever was on that satellite, it was worth looking in to. The satellite proved a welcome distraction from waiting for the return of the second fleet. It had turned out to be an old mining surveyor, sent into what would become Earthspace mere ertd before the humans entered the Great Unity. It had been destroyed - they couldn't tell by what - only twelve Human cycles before said entrance. Excitedly, the Gald searched the recorded scans from the surveyor for images of Earth. It only took them a few hundred false positives - deathworlds and wastelands all - before they found it. A world, extremely high in water content, of substandard gravity. Cloaked, seemingly unintentionally, in a cacophony of electromagnetic signals, the world had all the readouts of a near-spacefaring race. The Gald, elated at their discovery of Earth's exact location (what kind of planet hides themselves in the exact center of the protective shielding?), sent the messenger ship back across, with new commands for the fleet. There was no response. The second fleet had, somehow, vanished.

Frustrated now, the Gald sent a proper fleet for the third time, targeting the exact location of their quarry. Armed with the most formidable equipment the Great Unity (home to almost a thousand intelligent warlike species) had to offer, and with a borderline-forbidden Breacher signal processing unit that would allow them to transmit past the shielding back to their home planet, they closed in.

Everything was going well - the invasion force was actually feeling a bit pointless - when they reached the first field of wreckages. They stopped for just long enough to check that there were no survivors of their fleet, and that there were no intact ships or weapon systems to harvest. It was when they reached the second fleet that they realized something might actually be wrong - these ships were perfectly bisected along the power cores, the corpses of their crew shot midfloat even as they died in the depressurization of space. But again, scans revealed no useful resources, personnel, or information about the opposing force. By then the crews had begun to mutter. Nobody had any idea of what could have done all of this - the technology was far beyond that of the rest of the Great Unity. Some said that it was a rogue member of the Great Unity who had gotten there first. Others said that it was even a species from outside the known, who was trying to infiltrate the Great Unity through their physically weakest link. Either way, the mission of the Gald shifted in a new direction: save the humans from this strange new threat. The fact that doing so would net them the secrets of Earth was simply a bonus to a glorious war. The high command glinted at that - it was a political win/win from something that they had expected to bring them only hatred. As the Gald, weapons primed against the unknown threat, passed into the solar system that Earth was supposed to be located in, they began to broadcast their oncoming victory across the universe. Every member of the Great Unity guiltily watched, greedy for the final answer to the Question of Earth. The Gald passed the star that Earth circled. They counted planets our from the center, pausing when they got to the third nearest. It wasn't Earth. Or at least, it didn't look like it. There were no towering cities of light, nor were there full monasteries of inspiration. There were no massive tracts of wildlife, no "forests", no poles of ice, no massive mountains. Even the water, which had before been one of the natural wonders of this world according to the mining satellite, had vanished, leaving the continents indistinguishable from the sea floor. Horror and sadness filled the galaxy - clearly whatever had destroyed the Gald fleets had also smote the Earth into oblivion, leaving slag where there were once mountains, and radioactive craters where the satellite showed had once been glorious cities.

It was while the Gald drifted in shock that the armada appeared, dropping cloaks unlike anything the Great Unity had ever seen before unleashing whirlwinds of light and kinetics upon the unfortunate war fleet. The signal cut off. Silently - so as not to alarm the human colonies, who had, of course, not watched - the myriad worlds of the Great Unity came to a consensus. They would keep this horrendous act of violence from the Humans for as long as possible. They would arm themselves, surrounding Earthspace with the best and brightest of every militant force the Great Unity had to offer. And they would study every recorded trace of the Gald transmission until they knew everything possible about those monstrous destroyers who came to be called the Worldbreakers.

Several erdt passed, with no trace of the Worldbreakers. Another fleet, armed again with a Breacher, was sent into Earthspace. They didn't last long. A pattern developed, over time. A fleet would go in, armed with the newest equipment, often technology inspired by their very foes. They would briefly be able to scan Earth and the neighboring systems, often places with even more melted planets, before being extinguished by the Worldbreakers. It happened again and again. The newest of weapons would be blocked with shields specifically designed against their unique energy signatures. The most outlandish of strategies was outdone as if textbook. Nothing could phase the Worldbreakers; it became clear that they had played at war at extremes beyond the imaginations of even the sadistic Denwim.

The Worldbreakers became a common component of human-free discussions. Cults formed around them, both worshipping their undefeated might and fearing the eventuality that they would notice the rest of the intelligent universe. And then the day came. The day that turned everything around. It was a combination of three simultaneous events, between an obsessive astronomical historian, a lab treating a Human child for brain damage, and a student's analysis of the Gald transmissions. The historian was comparing old electromagnetic transmission records to the current species database, to track how many near-spaceflight species actually developed it and entered the Great Unity. It was quite surprised when it found a plethora of electromagnetic records, all obviously from different species, from all across what became Earthspace. It wondered to its colleagues what could have happened to seventy-three distinct species that would leave no trace of their civilization. No disaster they could imagine would have allowed the survival of only the Humans, a race too fragile to survive much of their own planet, much less interstellar catastrophes. The doctor who headed up the lab was doing routine lobe simulations, checking that each repaired part of the Human child's brain worked as properly. He was quite interested in this, as Humans generally performed their own operations, and the Human brain was largely a mystery to most of the universe. He was hoping for some distinctive part that would explain Humanity's artistic skills, so his simulations were very in depth.

One can imagine his surprise when, instead of symmetry and resonance being the core of the Human biopsychological makeup, his simulation showed little other than pure, unadulterated aggression and greed. Uncertain, he ran it again. And again. Then he called the other interspecies doctors he knew to have them replicate the results. It was confirmed - Humans, the race so famous for hating the mere thought of conflict, was at its core the most hateful species the Great Unity possessed, orders of magnitude worse than the Gald. And the student's work sealed the matter. In a thermometric readout of the planets destroyed by the Worldbreakers, she found that, according to standard interplanetary cooling formulas, the Earth had to have been destroyed long ago, before even the Humans reached out to the Great Unity to ask for privacy. Unity laws prevented locations with signs of unknown species from being placed under electromagnetic shielding and social quarantine, so the Worldbreakers couldn't have been there to destroy Earth before the shield was placed. The paradox did not lend itself at all to any known theories. The logic was clear. Even the hive minds agreed. Humanity was not the docile race of scholars and artists that they appeared. Nor were they shy about their homeworld. Not shy, but paranoid. Sensibly paranoid that, should the Great Unity discover their war-torn past, that they had not only destroyed at least seventy-three sentient species but also their own planet in the short time between when they had developed space flight and joined the Great Unity, the other members would have either fled or tried and failed to exterminate them. So they went with their other option - beauty. They hid their ugliness under a veil of wonder, only sending their unstoppable armada after those who came close to finding out their secret past.

The understanding rocked the galaxy. Nobody sane had even contemplated this before, that one species could appear so innocent and yet be so terrifying. Their worlds would never be the same. Despite all of this, little to nothing changed for the Humans. Aliens still came from all over to view their work, even if they now did it with apprehension. Scholars still appreciated their mystery, perhaps all the more.

And, of course, the unofficial rule that the topic of violence was never, ever to be breached while Humans were in contact suddenly became a lot more official.

Tl;dr: Humans are the super shy aliens. Too bad. It's always the quiet ones.

#humans are weird #humans are space oddities #alien #human art #space australia #humans are space fae

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downtheaxon · 7 years

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trigger warning: this is a meditation on the after-effects of sexual assault and relationship violence, featuring explicit discussion of suicidality and self harm. I know I write on these themes a lot, but I feel like this is more raw than usual and something that could potentially hurt a few of you - even if we are close friends, please don’t feel pressured to read it.

reassuring comment added now that I’ve written everything: I’m posting this as an exercise in vulnerability and a cry for comfort. that said, I am safe and feel like I should reassure everyone of that. I am safe and now that this is over I will crochet, eat some soup, and go to two yoga classes. maybe play some piano. writing like this externalizes the heaviness and makes me see it from an outsider’s perspective, which helps me pull out a lot of self-compassion. though I feel this way on some level, I also feel an urgent need to care for myself on other levels, and reach out when in crisis - in short, I am safe but have a lot to process. and processing it publicly like this helps with the shame I feel and will likely help me bring this up in my next therapy phonecall.

I finally have a day off and haven’t written about my mind in a really long while. but, before I write (which may take an hour and my god is it an hour that I need) I will put some salmon on my plate and brew a cup of black cherry tea. let me get back to you.

I’m letting hayley kiyoko’s girls like girls finish playing before I put on my spotify daily mix number 4 (hozier, bon iver, handmouth and more, apparently). there’s a cut grapefruit and salmon and tea near me, and my coffee cup that’s almost finished but has gone a bit cold by now. I don’t know why it is that writing through tumblr makes me express myself most truthfully, more truthfully than if I opened evernote or textedit or wrote on paper or if I spoke to someone directly via voice or text. the liminal space of having no audience while having a vast audience is comforting, I guess. a different kind of false vulnerability coupled with a kind of anonymity.

now that I’ve put on daily mix 4, let me start by saying what I thought to say when I got up to make tea: I am permeated by sadness.

it is exhausting to be permeated by sadness. I feel it at the base of my sternum, stirring gently, right at home in my very core. agitated when something goes wrong, and peacefully present otherwise. this is all a cliche, I know. I know. but lately my sadness feels like its own separate entity, living comfortably in me, and almost harmoniously. it keeps quiet sometimes, which I am grateful for, but still nuzzles into me just to remind me - I’m here and will always be here and that’s ok.

and that’s ok.

I’m trying to make peace with who I am. I know that self-identity shapes perception. I know that thinking of myself as a cook makes me cook more, that thinking of myself as a yogi makes me take advantage of my unlimited classes more, that thinking of myself as mentally ill probably exacerbates symptoms (just think positive!).

I’m trying to make peace with my limitations. my need for regularity in sleep and diet, my rapid exhaustion, my failing memory. my tendency to shut down completely. my readiness to cry when something hits me hard.

when something hits me hard.

I just paused in writing this to read a reference letter that my old volunteer coordinator wrote for a big national scholarship (she emailed it to me as I was writing this). and I cried. I cried at the cognitive dissonance of my brain repeatedly telling me how worthless I am and this person tangibly proving the wonderful things they have to say about me. it’s funny because I really believe that those two people exist at once.

“I love me but I don’t love me back” to paraphrase a post I recently reblogged.

how can I exist as selfish, unloveable, and needing to be hurt punished destroyed when I also exist as compassionate, kindhearted, intelligent, successful, and supportive?

and yet my brain is convinced, convinced, that this is how this works. when I’m tired, I have less energy to devote to silencing the ever-pressing thought of “you don’t deserve to be alive”. I am not suicidal, per se, because I want to be alive. things are really looking up lately, and really working out, and I am involved in exciting initiatives and have mutually cared about wonderful and interesting people and am growing all the time... but I do not feel like I deserve it.

how do I fight for the things I should be fighting for (like scholarships, authorship, opportunities, attention?) when I feel like I don’t deserve to relax, to eat, to laugh.

my homework for therapy for these two weeks was to think about shame. let me say this: I am ashamed to tell anyone how I feel. I am ashamed of these complex feelings of no self worth, I am ashamed of my urge to self destruct, I am ashamed of my shame. I am ashamed to say the truth about how I feel, about what I experience, about how I react.

two weeks ago, at the doctor’s, I cried uncontrollably. and I mean that literally. I cry a lot, maybe once a week, and it’s often dramatic and torrential (and necessary). but these tears were... different somehow. I don’t remember a lot from the winter of 2014, when I spent more of my time awake in flashbacks to the past than in the present, but I suspect that these recent tears were similar to those days.

“that’s not supposed to hurt” the doctor said very kindly very gently and I am on my back crying crying crying unable to see and I barely hear her and I am afraid and ashamed and crying.

“I’m sorry, I have a history” was all I could choke up and she wouldn’t let it go. I know why, I know it’s her training, she needs to make sure it’s ok and not believe me when I say “it’s nothing, it’s fine, I’m ok” she’s supposed to push, to ask, to make me tell her. and I cry, I cry and I make it off the exam table to the chair where she writes my prescription and I cry I cry I cry. I step out of the office, to the lab to drop off the swab for testing (the poor lab tech does not acknowledge I am crying but is clearly uncomfortable), to the bathroom to cry more. fifteen minutes later I am unable to stop and I am hungry and want to go home so I walk through campus, first inside then outside, crying quietly, effortlessly. my face barely moves and tears just go and go and go and it’s raining outside and I keep crying.

I walk home slowly and pick up my prescription close to the house, so nearly an hour has past since I started crying. I am more in control now, thankfully. the pharmacist says, in a whisper as she hands me the prescription “just try not to have relations with anyone” and something breaks more. tears and shame.

this is all a fucking cliche.

I tell my therapist about it a week later, when I call him by the river, but I change the subject right after. we revisit it three times during the hour, always briefly, three sentences. how do I talk about it?

I know that there is so much I don’t remember. I know. the fall of 2013 is a blur of pain and I have recurring visions that I don’t know if they were true. when I am upset and think that I deserve to be hurt, I see myself getting pushed into a wall, right shoulder and bicep first, hip and head next. always the same image. but I don’t think that happened, because I would remember it.

(but what about the gap in my memory after he takes my phone from me?)

I estimate: how many times? first maybe two times a week, by the end every day. does every day count? when did it start being every day? it couldn’t have been every day.

I know when the last times were with certainty. I know the dates and even the times of day. the circumstances. those are clear.

the cliche of talking about this (I don’t call it by the word almost ever I don’t call it by any word sometimes and today is one of those days) almost four years after it happened. over two weeks after my amygdala relived it anew.

I think that’s the real trouble with these things. they feel like they keep happening. first, it wasn’t once. it was at least two times, but probably not more than a few dozen worth. probably. do the math.

(god you’re pathetic, how could you ever let that happen a few dozen times? no one would do that, you must be making it up so that you can have an excuse to feel sorry for yourself)

and since it happened a lot (or didn’t happen at all, I made it up), the memories all muddled together, the fearshame returning all the time... it’s a cliche, I know, I know it’s a cliche, but it feels so recent. it feels like I can’t tell the difference between the act and the memory. the replica is the real thing, the same fearshame (I like putting those words together because that is the thing that feeds my sadness and it is one and the same).

cliche, really.

how do I cure this? how do I stop being stuck and having this on replay again and again and again.

I feel like I’m dishonest with people who don’t know. if someone doesn’t know about this, well, they have the wrong idea about me. they don’t see the rot.

(the feeling of being fundamentally rotten and flawed, shame around who you are, the feeling of being destined to hurt anyone in the end, the feeling of being broken, the feeling of being fundamentally evil, the feeling of imposter syndrome on a greater scale, the feeling of inadequacy, the feeling of deserving this pain and so much more pain, the feeling of deserving getting slammed into a wall right shoulder first)

but I am ashamed. ashamed of the trauma rot pain.

(hasthag bell let’s talk day and pretend that mental health exists in isolation of abuse and flawed power dynamics and people getting profoundly hurt by other people and that if we all just talked more it would go away but talking remains frightening when it’s not self contained in the conventional narrative)

how to combat the sense of “no, you don’t understand, I’m not legitimately ill. I deserve to feel this way. I am doomed to sadness.”

I hate the just world hypothesis, that bad things happen to bad people and good things happen to good people. but I believe it.

and if bad things happened to me, it is because I am bad, and therefore I don’t deserve to be alive. but I am ashamed of that thought because if I say it out loud people will know how bad I am, how rotten, how destroyed, how obsessed with self pity. they will know and they will agree.

how can I be the worst human on earth and trick others into thinking that I am kind, loving, smart, supportive?

it is comical when the mental illness tricks you and you find yourself thinking “well, I couldn’t possibly be worse than hitler” and it says “oh no, trust me, you’re way worse than hitler”. I chuckle but the sadness stirs at the base of my sternum, awake and nuzzling into me.

how do you heal when you remain convinced that you deserve to have your bones broken instead?

#personal #this is not a happy post

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jesseneufeld · 6 years

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RHR: How to Use Tech to Improve Your Sleep, with Harpreet Rai

In this episode, we discuss:

What the Oura Ring can do

The importance of sleep

Why your brain needs downtime

Using technology to improve your health

How to measure your stress levels

How your sleep reflects the way you spent your day

What’s next for the Oura Ring

How you can get $50 off your Oura Ring purchase

Show notes:

Oura Ring

“Sleep Quality and Adolescent Default Mode Network Connectivity.”

Learning How to Learn from Coursera

The Moment app

The Center for Humane Technology from Tristan Harris

youtube

[smart_track_player url="https://ift.tt/2EHFkKZ" title="How to Use Tech to Improve Your Sleep, with Harpreet Rai" artist="Chris Kresser" ]

Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. This week I’m excited to welcome Harpreet Rai as my guest. He is the CEO of Oura Ring.

The Oura Ring is, I think, the most effective device on the market today for tracking things like heart rate variability, sleep, and physical activity. I have one myself and we use it extensively with our patients in the clinic. So I wanted to talk with Harpreet about heart rate variability, what it can tell us, how we can use it to improve our health, the sleep tracking technology in the Oura Ring and why that’s important, and just what the general value is of increasing our awareness about the various behaviors and interventions that we do on a daily basis and how they impact our sleep and our stress as measured by heart rate variability and our overall health. All right, let’s dive in.

Chris Kresser: Harpreet, such a pleasure to finally have you on the show. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

Harpreet Rai: Likewise, Chris. Yeah, it was awesome to connect early in the year at Paleo f(x), and glad we finally got to reconnect now.

Chris Kresser: Cool, so I'm looking at my Oura Ring right now on my finger. It's funny, I've been in the clinic, I've had at least five or six patients say, “Oh, you’ve got your ring. How did you get yours already in the new version?” And I’ve sensed some Oura Ring envy among my people. But I know that the new version is shipping out now. Because I preordered one, so now I have two. So if anyone needs a size 10 … Oh, actually I’m just noticing that my other one is a different color.

Harpreet Rai: Okay, nice.

Chris Kresser: So maybe I can fashionably go back and forth between two different rings here. So yeah, the reason I wanted to have you on is not to create more ring envy, but to talk about the really cool technology behind this ring. And just even step back further and discuss why someone like me would wear a ring like this.

Harpreet Rai: Sure.

Chris Kresser: What it can do for us and why you’ve made some of, at Oura, made some of the decisions that you made. Because the tracking industry is pretty big now. There's so many different devices and things you can choose from, Apple watch, Fitbit, Garmin, etc. And in a way you could look at it like, “Why did we need another one?”

Harpreet Rai: Right.

What the Oura Ring Can Do

Chris Kresser: But I think there are some really clear and interesting answers to that question. You at Oura have chosen to focus on sleep, which is interesting in itself, because so many others focus on things like steps and activity. And even some on, like Apple watch is really kind of promoting health protection. Like you fall down, or if you're having a heart attack or something like that, which is great. But why sleep?

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. Look, thanks for the question, and maybe just to make sure we don’t create more anger, potential Oura envy here, just to let everyone know we put this on our blog as well. We've now shipped over 10,000 gen two Oura Rings. We’re shipping, we’ve sent thousands per week. So people, they are coming soon. Frankly, we got more demand than we expected, and we’re a small company, and we’re trying to grow as fast as we can, but we do apologize, and our team is working around the clock, literally, to get them out as fast as we can.

Chris Kresser: Let me just give full disclosure. I was provided an Oura Ring to evaluate and I also bought one. So you can take my recommendations with that in mind. I paid money for one, and I’m very happy that I did. And I was also generously provided one for evaluation by Harpreet. So always important for me to get that out there.

The Importance of Sleep

Harpreet Rai: Appreciate that. But yeah, look, I think you’re right, the wearable market, they’ve been around for quite some time now. I think Fitbit was started even a little bit around 10 years ago. But our view was, as you mentioned, like, we wanted to focus on sleep. I think there's a couple reasons as to why we wanted to focus on it, but literally from the health aspect—and I think this is more longer term—but still there is a clear link between lack of sleep and all types of chronic disease like cardiovascular disease, cancer, longevity, just length of life, diabetes, and also Alzheimer's.

But if you look a little bit shorter term, we also think about it as it's literally the best performance-enhancing drug out there. I think Matt Walker said this, and he's absolutely right. If I told you or any of your patients or people that hey, or any of my friends, that you can take a drug that will increase your testosterone, literally improve your memory recall the next day, right? Will help you cognitively and emotionally, will help keep your insulin levels in check and prevent cardiovascular disease and help create more killer T cells that help fight off cancer, I feel like everyone would take that pill.

Chris Kresser: That’d be a trillion-dollar pill.

Harpreet Rai: It would probably be the biggest and most successful drug ever.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, and I tell this to my patients, and I know Pete Attia says this too, if you had to choose between letting your diet slip or letting your sleep slip, what would you choose? And a lot of people say diet over sleep. They’ll protect their diet over their sleep. But really, if you have to make that choice, which hopefully you don’t, diet is the obvious answer because if your sleep slips, you’re going to suffer far more and more quickly than if your diet slips.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly, yeah. So that's one of reasons we really focused on it. I think the other concept that’s starting to change, I think, a little bit now and we’re seeing in sort of the professional sports world, but also frankly, from a Functional Medicine world, thanks to people like you, is that if you want to feel better tomorrow, if you want to perform better tomorrow, you’ve got to start getting ready today before, and that starts with your sleep. So this idea of sleeping is sort of the leading indicator for how you can perform better tomorrow. Something that’s actionable.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: I think the last thing really is we’re really more distracted than ever. The average person is touching their cell phone about 10 times an hour. We have people who are watching more Netflix than ever, YouTube than ever, spending more time on emails. Frankly, eating later, food-ondemand restaurants open later, and all those things are taking away from our sleep. And so if we just look as a society on average, a third of the population is getting less than six hours.

I think overall, over the last 30 to 40 years, the amount of sleep as a society has fallen by one hour. And so it's also just causing people to be tired the next day, to have brain fog, and frankly, not to be as introspective. So I think it's this idea of being a little bit more conscious and being present. I think sleep is starting to, the lack of sleep is hurting our society as a whole on that.

Why Your Brain Needs Downtime

Chris Kresser: Yeah. I think you know about the default mode network, and in today's technology-addicted world, one of the consequences that we suffer from that is our brains don't enter this default mode network, which is really like, the easiest way to think of it is just downtime for the brain. We used to think that when we’re not, the brain wasn’t active, it was just at rest and nothing was happening. But now we know that's totally false and that when the brain is “at rest,” I’m doing air quotes, “at rest,” if we’re just kind of zoning out, looking out the window, daydreaming, the brain is incredibly active. And that activity is what generates creativity and innovation and new ways of thinking about things. And it’s restorative and rejuvenative.

And I've seen studies, I'm looking at one right now, actually, it's called “Sleep Quality and Adolescent Default Mode Network Connectivity.” And this study basically found that sleep deprivation, which is really common in adolescents and of course in adults too, led to reduced connectivity in the default mode network. So that would be expected to lead to lower creativity, less capacity to think out-of-the-box and in adolescents, actually, in this study they’re speculating that it interferes with brain development. So this is pretty serious stuff.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, I think that's without a doubt. It's funny, right? I think there's two aspects where I looked into that on that thread is just think about sleep and when we go into REM sleep. So when you go into REM sleep, your frontal cortex, the sergeant of your brain, shuts off, and so your brain actually literally explores. And it's in this phase that most of our memory consolidation happens. Your brain starts playing those memories of what happened during the day, three times at 3X speed. So it's, like, fast-forwarding everything and it’s literally repetition, repetition, and that helps memory consolidation.

But the other thing on that thread of, like, when your brain is allowed to wander, like you said, during the day, there's a great course on this on Coursera and it’s called Learning How to Learn. And I think it’s created by two professors out at University … UCSD in San Diego, and then also McMaster. And what they talk about is exactly what you're saying that study cited, is that actually this downtime is when diffuse learning happens. It's when that mental conductivity happens. And from digital devices today, if you're literally checking your phone once every 10 minutes, your brain isn’t allowed to wander.

It's coming back, it's checking in, it's actually probably getting back to that addiction type mentality that so many of us have from other things like trading stocks or bitcoin, and frankly, that is without a doubt hurting productivity and just your mental ability as a whole.

Chris Kresser: It’s activating the dopamine reward system over and over again, and that's a certain kind of goal-driven mental state to be in that can be highly productive and useful, but not … that's not a state that we’re supposed to be in 24/7. And if we are, then as you said, we miss out on all of the deeper kinds of learning and growth and evolution that can happen in our brain. And I think it's a … I did a two-hour presentation on technology addiction and its effects on the health and the brain for the Health Coach Training Program.

And in the course of researching for that, I became quite alarmed, to be honest. I mean, this is something I've been aware of for a long time, so it wasn't a surprise, but doing the actual research and pulling it all together, it was like, this is a serious threat to humanity. I mean, I don't think most people actually realize how significant this can be.

Harpreet Rai: I think Tristan Harris, he’s—

Chris Kresser: Former Google.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly. Like, I forget his exact title though. The chief ethical officer? I’m not entirely sure.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, yeah.

Harpreet Rai: But yeah, these things are getting more and more addicting. I use, I think over a billion people use Chrome, the web browser.

Chris Kresser: Right, yes.

Harpreet Rai: And there is this new thing in Chrome on mobile where, I don’t know how they decided to roll this out, but when you open a new tab now, at least for me and I know many others who I’ve checked with on this, is that you’ll have the Google search box and then underneath you’ll see like six or eight stories. And literally they’re all news articles about things that you’ve been searching recently. And what is that designed to do? I mean, let’s get real. It’s designed to keep you clicking more, spend more time in Chrome. Why? If you spend more time in Chrome, you’re looking at more ads.

Chris Kresser: You’re worth more to advertisers.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, you’re worth more to advertisers. More time spent, right? You’re driving those impressions up, and so it’s amazing. I saw that in myself. Well, okay, I went from having 10 Chrome windows open, or tabs open, to all of a sudden 20 or 30. And I had to find out how to look up, how to remove that from my phone. But what if we started checking with ourselves as often as we check in with our phones? I know there’s been, like, sayings like that before out there on Instagram. But I think it's really true, and sleep is a form of checking in, and I think we’re going to talk about heart rate variability.

But look, we see this from our users. So many users will post stories, will send us screenshots of their data, and they say, “Hey, when I went camping for two weeks” or “I went on vacation or even camping for two nights,” all of a sudden you'll see deep sleep improved, you'll see your heart rate variability improve, not as much disturbances. And we sort of ask ourselves as a company, we’re like, oh, wow, that’s awesome. Why is that happening? Well, there could be a ton of things. It could be happening because actually you’re sleeping outside, the ground is colder, and so as a result, we know that a cool temperature at night helps improve deep sleep. Okay, that could be something. The other reason is the light goes down, right?

So the sun goes down at six, seven o’clock, depending on the time of the year and where you are. Okay, so actually melatonin is being released at the right time. And probably the third reason if I had to guess is, or fourth reason, you’re out in nature, you’re in the trees. We know there’s some positive effects there. But you're probably not looking at your phone as much.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely, 100 percent.

Using Technology to Improve Your Health

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, you’re there in the present, you’re with friends, your mind is being stimulated in nature just walking. And so I think us as a company, I think we’ve thought about using technology for improving our health, using technology to improve our consciousness, and I think that's another reason why we focus more on sleep. Because when some of these things don't happen, you do see that data reflected in your sleep. Or perhaps in your heart rate variability. And so those are a couple reasons as to why we focused on sleep.

Chris Kresser: Yeah. I’m glad you did because people need help. We all need help. Everyone’s susceptible in this society that we live in now. Sleep is not something that's valued. There's all kinds of sayings that reflect that. Like, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” is one of the most interesting ones to me because it’s like, well, yeah, you’ll be dead a lot sooner if you don’t sleep. So I guess you’ll get more that way. But it’s just, we live in a culture that is, you’re kind of fighting an uphill battle if you’re trying to get sleep because there's so many influences that interfere with it. From the blue light that devices emit to Netflix’s autoplay feature—now, if you watch something on Netflix, before you can even lean over and turn it off, it’s already going on to the next one. And it’s just another way that our attention is kind of hijacked. So having, to me, that’s when the biggest benefits of a device like this is it’s basically an awareness enhancer. It’s something that can remind us to pay attention.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: When we bring our attention to something, that’s what enables us to change it. I had a, one of my then-teachers in the past liked to say, “The focus of your attention determines the quality of your experience.” Which really is a powerful saying if you think about it. It's only what we are attending to that is going to drive our quality of life and our experience, and we only experience and remember what we pay attention to.

So the most powerful thing for me around this is thinking about myself, like, I call it the rocking chair test, where I’m 100 years old and I’m looking back, am I going to want to look back on a life where I spent a large part of my day, like, staring at my phone? Or am I going to want to look back on a life that was richer and more fully lived? And I know what the answer to that question is, and that’s what drives a lot of my choices. But like anyone else, I need reminders and help. And that’s where something like this can be really useful because it’s just a non-intrusive guide that I’ll just occasionally … I don’t do it every day because I’m pretty tuned in to my rhythms at this point. But if I make some kind of change or intervention, then I have a way of getting immediate feedback on what the results of that were in terms of my sleep and heart rate variability, which is pretty cool.

That’s something that took longer in the past. More experimentation and trying to figure those things out, but let’s say I’m like, “Okay, I want to check and see what happens if I eat a snack before bed. How does that affect my sleep?” I can immediately get that feedback in a way that I couldn’t get before, which is pretty cool.

Harpreet Rai: I mean, frankly, your example of a snack before bed, I have no problem putting this out there. I love ice cream. I think a lot of Americans do.

Chris Kresser: What’s not to like?

Harpreet Rai: What’s not to like? I think it’s something like, guess how many pounds of ice cream the average American eats in a year.

Chris Kresser: Oh, it’s probably …

Harpreet Rai: Take a guess.

Chris Kresser: Jeez, I don’t know. Let’s see, 100?

Harpreet Rai: Oh, no, it’s not that bad.

Chris Kresser: I think it would be. If you think about, like, if they’re only eating, if that was the only source of sugar, it probably would.

Harpreet Rai: Sure, oh, of course, yeah. I think it’s something like 23 pounds.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: So or …

Chris Kresser: Twenty pounds is an enormous amount of ice cream, though.

Harpreet Rai: It’s actually, so it’s surprising. It’s actually … it is an … it’s not. It’s, “a pint’s a pound the whole way around,” I think is the saying. So a pint, 16 ounces, what’s in that standard Ben & Jerry’s little thing that people love to eat including myself, that’s a pint. And when I first got an Oura Ring a few years ago when we were working on this and the Kickstarter just launched, I remember like, yeah, every once in awhile, I’m not going to lie, I’d be, “Oh, it would be a cheat day.” Or I’d been keto for about 30 days in a row, I want to start to disrupt the cycle and I reach for something that’s absolutely terrible for me. And normally you’re having a dessert close to your bedtime.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And normally I'd eat half a pint, or I’m sure Ben & Jerry's has thought about magically how to fit that pint and add the right ingredients to make sure you finish the whole thing in one night. But let’s say I ate a pint of ice cream and I ate it an hour or two before bed, right when you’re watching Netflix after you’ve finished some work for the day and finished your dinner. And so you’re distracted, you’re watching TV, and the next thing you know, the pint of ice cream is gone. It just was incredible to see my data the next day, literally, the next day on how bad I slept.

I would normally get 45 minutes to an hour of deep sleep, it would be 15 minutes. My resting heart rate, typically, let’s say if I’m working out a little bit more, should be probably in the mid to high 40s, right? But all of a sudden now it’s spiked to like mid-50s. And then looking my heart rate variability, something that we know is linked to fasting glucose levels or glucose levels, and also just an overall signal of parasympathetic stress. Alessandro Ferretti, I think, has done a lot of great work out there on sort of triangulating heart rate variability and changes in HRV related to fasting glucose levels.

And so I’d look at my HRV data the next day, and I’m like, “Wow, down by a third.” And so to me it was, like, immediate feedback. It was like, “Whoa, dummy, don’t do this anymore.” Like, yeah, I feel a little bit slow the next day. After I ate a pint of ice cream, I sort of would feel that in my gut, and I knew I shouldn’t have done it. And I’ll feel like I have to go to the gym and work it off, but just being able to see that data the next day, it’s like, yeah, I got this personal assistant, to your point. I got someone in my corner who’s looking out for me. I got—what’s that character in James Bond?—Moneypenny.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Harpreet Rai: It’s like I’ll check in with Moneypenny in the morning and, “Oh, man, yeah, look, Bond,” I’m no Bond, but like, “Hey, Harpreet, something is dramatically wrong here. Did you eat a late meal last night?” It’s one of our more popular messages in the Oura app from the data we see amongst our users.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And it’s just amazing to see the feedback, and then you’re like, “Oh, wow, that really did have a big impact.” And you then, the next time you have that craving, like, I start thinking about how much worse I’m going to be the next day. How much worse my data is going to be and how much worse I’m going to feel. And frankly, I think my consumption—thank God—of Ben & Jerry’s has gone down tremendously.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, well, I mean, that’s a really valuable insight to get. And it’s interesting for me. I’ve done a lot of experiments. One is with the infrared, we have a near infrared sauna, a SaunaSpace. I just actually had Brian on from SaunaSpace to talk about infrared sauna as a lever for health and life extension and wellness. And so I've been experimenting with different timing of using the sauna. Do I sleep better if I do it right before bed? Or do I sleep better if I do it in the afternoon?

And that's been really interesting and also even with like meditation practice, and sometimes if I—and I've known this, actually, just for years—but there's certain things that I've kind of known for a while intuitively that I’ve wanted to like see what the data say about it. And if I meditate too close to sleep, I actually sleep worse because it gets me into a different brainwave state that is not necessarily conducive to sleep. So, yeah, really useful for that.

How to Measure Your Stress Levels

And I want to kind of segue into stress, since that's really a big part of the sleep discussion, why people aren't sleeping. Either being so kind of overwhelmed and just not having as much time to spend in bed or once they get in bed, not being able to sleep because of the level of stress.

And one of the best objective ways of measuring stress response is heart rate variability, which is something that I think people, more people have heard of now. But still I notice when I'm talking to my patients that I would say about 50, 60 percent of people have not heard of heart rate variability, or if they have, they haven't really heard about it. They’ve heard about it more in the context of assessing performance readiness in athletics, but not as much in terms of stress. So why don’t we shift gears and talk a little bit about HRV and how Oura is measuring it and what we can do with that data.

Harpreet Rai: Sure. Yeah, I mean, so HRV, literally, what does it mean? I guess heart rate variability, so it’s the variation of your heart beat. So you and I are on this podcast. Maybe I had more coffee than you today, for example. So let’s say my heart rate’s 70 beats per minute and your resting heart rate, let’s say, is sub 60. That's beats per minute, right? It turns out that every single beat is actually slightly different over the course of that minute.

One may be at, let’s say for me, is 69. The next beat might be at 71 beats per minute. The next one might be at 60.5 beats per minute. So the individual variation between each beat or the interbeat interval, that’s actually, that variation turns out as a great signal for us in stress in the human body, in mind and stress. So there’s been a lot of great research showing the interpretation of sort of your nervous system being in a parasympathetic mode or higher stressed out, or sorry, a sympathetic mode, which is indicating more stress. Or parasympathetic mode, which is less stress.

And so all the research that’s been done is they’re showing that low HRV is more tied to chronic disease, more tied to probably bad insulin resistance and higher fasting and postprandial glucose levels. They’re also doing a lot of work sort of showing that’s a leading indicator for stroke and heart attack. So I think it’s also a great indicator for short-term stress.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: One of the things we know about meditation is doing meditation can actually just in a short session no longer than 20 minutes, I think that some of the research out there, 10 to 20 minutes, increase heart rate variability and put you more into that parasympathetic stress.

Chris Kresser: That’s fun. I’ve been able to track that, and that’s really fun to see that response.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, that’s something we’re going to be introducing in the Oura Ring, as well, during a session.

Chris Kresser: Cool. Yeah, I’ve used other devices to do that, but where you can actually see the real-time feedback, but I think that’s really powerful to give people an experience of being able to influence an objective marker of their stress response. There’s something to that, I think. Something to being able to see, like, a readout on a screen that your, whatever you’re doing, whether it’s meditation or something else, is having a real and measurable impact on such an important variable of your health I think is a very, is a powerful experience to give people.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. Look, I think it comes back to that ice cream example. It’s actionable.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Harpreet Rai: If you start to see your heart rate variability improve when you meditate, you’re probably going to want to meditate more. It gives you more conviction or confidence that, hey, this is actually helping me. I think it’s just like a continuous glucose monitor. If you start to wear one of those, and let’s say you’re Paleo and still eat certain types of fruit, like I do. Like, I realized I have a huge glucose response to certain types of fruit. And so it was really instrumental in me starting to cut out things that weren’t working for me.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, I bet that helped with the ice cream too.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. Yes.

Chris Kresser: The combination of the CGM and the Oura Ring.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly.

Chris Kresser: It makes you think two or three times about the ice cream.

Harpreet Rai: Totally. Yeah, look, the way we collect heart rate variability today is we actually, we sample your heart rate variability all throughout the night. So maybe just a little bit how we do that easier and better than some of the other devices out there. We created a ring, not just because of fashion, but actually because of accuracy and access to a really, an easy way to get a very, very good heart rate.

So if you think about a hospital and you know this, you’re the doctor. So why does every hospital in the ICU, they’re measuring your SpO2 and your heart rate from your finger? It turns out that those arteries on the inside of your wrist are going into your hand, in the skin on your hand, and the nerve density, the skin is extremely thin. And so that artery, that arterial pulse in your finger is about 50 times, almost, in some individuals, 100 times stronger, that signal strength of that pulse on that finger than, let's say where your wristwatch sits, which is venous pulse, not an arterial pulse.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And so we saw that, we knew that. There's companies that make these heart rate sensors in hospitals. We were pretty observant of that. I think the challenge was, how do you put all the same type of technology, optical technology from sort of a bigger wrist-based unit into something that can fit on the finger? And so we did our gen one as a proof of concept showing that it is achievable, and then really, the ring was a little big. That’s obviously some of the feedback and pushback we got.

Chris Kresser: I’ve got to say, that's what kept me from using it initially.

Harpreet Rai: This unit? Yeah.

Chris Kresser: I was pretty happy when I saw the new one. And they are, they’re really, I’m pretty tough. Like, I don’t really like jewelry, I don’t wear much jewelry. I don’t even wear a watch, and I have my wedding band, and that’s it. So I really didn’t want something that was going to be obtrusive and, like, really obvious and people asking me all the time, “What’s that?” I’m kind of a private person. I’m just not steered that way.

Yeah. So this actually is about the same, it’s a little bit, tiny bit wider than my wedding band and maybe a touch thicker. But if you’re looking at it from, if you’re not looking at it up close, most people would just assume almost that it was. I’ve never actually had anyone come up to me and say, “What’s that? Why are you wearing that thing that is very large on your finger?”

Harpreet Rai: Right, yeah.

Chris Kresser: They just assume it’s a ring that I’m wearing because I like to wear rings. That works for me.

Harpreet Rai: We’ve so … yeah, no, thank you. The gen one versus gen two, a lot of people have told us that, who bought a gen two have said, “Yeah, I heard about you guys with gen one, but the improvements in the size …” and also the battery life, we were able to extend the battery life from two nights to six nights now. So on the seventh day you’ll have to charge it. But it charges in about an hour. So there were big improvements on sort of the form factor, decreasing the size, but also extending the battery life. But yeah, so starting off, or getting back on that thread of why the finger, it was really because its pulse signal is really strong.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And so throughout the night we’re actually measuring your heartbeat and we’re shining infrared light, just like the SaunaSpace, we’re shining a tiny infrared light at 250 hertz, or 250 times a second. Most of the wrist-based wearables are sort of sampling anywhere from somewhere in, actually some of them two hertz, like two times a second. But I would say the average, call it Fitbit or Apple watch, is probably sampling anywhere between sort of 10 and 24, 26 hertz.

And so because we use less power than those devices, because we’re sensing off the finger, we can sample much more often. And that gives us a much more robust heart rate measurement, it allows us to see every single beat. We actually just recently had an abstract published in the medical journal Sleep showing that our HRV overnight compared to an EKG is 98 percent-correlated R2. We will be publishing the full paper later this year with an independent researcher validating that on our gen two. So that will be really fun.

Chris Kresser: That’s a pretty strong correlation.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: For people who are not familiar with data and that kind of measurement, that’s a pretty true fidelity.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. And so that’s … we measure HRV, actually, throughout the whole night, every single beat. We are measuring it during the day as well. But we haven’t released the information yet. The reason is, I think, during the day, a lot of people ask us why we haven’t done that, is there’s a lot more noise. It’s sometimes hard to tell.

Traditionally people would do, and you tell me how you did it, but a lot of people would do an HRV test first thing when they wake up in the morning. You put on a chest strap and you would sort of try to lay in bed, calm, but almost like sleeping and get this HRV measurement over five to 10 minutes. But that was sort of a pain in the butt to do. Not a lot of people wanted to do it. And frankly, if you woke up with an alarm, you didn’t wake up with an alarm, if you had a cup of coffee or—

Chris Kresser: A bad night’s sleep.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, a bad night’s sleep or let’s say something else woke you up, like I live in the city in San Francisco with cars honking outside.

Chris Kresser: Your seven-year-old daughter coming in and pulling you out of bed. Yeah, any number of things.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly. That’s going to throw off that HRV reading for those 10 minutes. And so during the day, just imagine that if you had two cups of coffee instead of one, if you were in a little bit of a rush to work and you were late for a meeting, or frankly, even if you had to go to the bathroom, that HRV data can be really noisy. So what we have found is just by collecting a lot of data is sort of saying that there happens to be a clearer signal, actually, at looking at HRV data all throughout the night.

And it sort of gets back, actually, to what happens to our brains and our bodies when we sleep. It’s that culmination of stress during the day is sort of reflected during the night. So your night will end up being almost like the mirror of your day, as our chief scientist at our company likes to say. And so we found it’s actually a really easy time to look at a large amount of data, get a really good baseline, and then see how that baseline changes day to day based on your activities.

Whether you pounded that pint of ice cream or you had a late workout or frankly even sometimes a really hard workout, we’ll see people that go and they have a really hard weightlifting session, your HRV will go down that night.

Chris Kresser: Of course, yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And it should.

Chris Kresser: It’s a stressor on the body. That’s how it works.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. And it should. And then you can see, it’s cool to see, oh, but two days later or maybe even three days later, depending on what kind of shape you’re in, my HRV is actually higher than it was that first day I worked out.

Chris Kresser: And that’s traditionally how HRV has been used with athletes to determine how long they need to rest and recover before they work out again.

How Your Sleep Reflects the Way You Spent Your Day

I have to rewind, though, because you said something that’s very important, and I want to call it out. Because it’s similar to something that I said to my patients for years, which is your night will be a mirror image of your day.

And I've said that in a less elegant way to patients often when we talk about sleep, which is, you can't run around like a chicken with your head cut off all day and then expect to just, like, hit the sleep button and sleep peacefully and restfully throughout the whole night. And yet that's exactly what a lot of us do. And that's one of the reason sleeping pills are so one of the most commonly prescribed medications and OTC medications. Because we do that. We do just kind of go around our day in a crazy way, and then it comes time to sleep, and we wonder why we can't sleep and why we’re not sleeping restfully. So I just think that’s such an important concept.

A Feldenkrais practitioner that I did some training with at one point said the same thing. Like, if you want to sleep well, you have to manage your stress levels throughout the day.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Full stop.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. That’s absolutely right. It's this really interesting cycle where, like, your activity during the day is reflected at night. And then what happens at night sort of sets you up for success or potential failure the next day.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And so I think our view as a company was, well, let's focus on the time to gather more accurate data, frankly, sometimes even more actionable data and easier to understand data, and that happens to be your sleep data. Because you can sort of see the culmination of all those different choices you made during the day between food, maybe stress at work, your activity, which could be good stress, obviously, and see how that’s affecting your sleep.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely.

Harpreet Rai: So that’s really why we focus on it. But yeah, I mean, getting back to HRV, I think, look, it's great that it's now becoming a metric that's more and more discussed. I do think, like, we designed our device to capture that data pretty seamlessly. Really, sort of the intersection of comfort and ease of use and accuracy. And that we were pretty conscious, like, we chose infrared light. Most other wearables choose green light. That green light is disturbing when you sleep. We know it's not good for the photoreceptors in your skin. It's literally going to harm your sleep. And so that was a conscious decision we made.

And you know we didn't put any lights in the Oura Ring, like visible lights or LED indicators. Another reason is because we’re already touching our phones once every 10 minutes or more. And so why, why would you want something that's distracting even more? So we made a lot of these kind of conscious decisions to bring people … like, and get them less distracted and bring them into the present, as you mentioned. And heart rate variability, that’s something I think we’re to continue to see more research on, continue to be used more and more. First, sort of leading edge with the Functional Medicine practice, but hopefully eventually we’ll even get the larger medical system looking at it more seriously.

Chris Kresser: That’s great. I like the ring for that reason too. Again, going back to the tech addiction presentation, so many adults, I think something like 60 or 70 percent, sleep with their phone in their bedroom or even right in their bed or near their pillow or on their bed stand next to them. And I think that with adolescents, that number is like 80 or 85 percent.

Harpreet Rai: That’s scary.

Chris Kresser: Which is horrifying, yeah, when you know what having, when you see the research on what having a phone that close to you while you’re sleeping does. Not just because of the light that it emits, but because of the association our brain has with the phone. And if notifications are coming in and we’re thinking about what’s happening, then that’s not going to be conducive to sleep.

So it’s nice that you just can have the ring on and not have to have your phone or even a watch that has all sorts of notifications and things on it nearby. A couple of people I know are really concerned about EMF and Bluetooth and things like that and are reluctant to wear anything on their body like a watch or a ring that has that technology. So what would you say to those folks?

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, look, we did actually put an airplane mode in our device, and we see a lot of users like that, and they use it quite frequently. So you can turn the ring on an airplane mode and it actually will store data up to six weeks now. So you don't ever have to sync it, you can go a whole month without syncing it. In fact, we’re going to be collecting some data with the university and a professor with some hunter–gatherers in Africa and we’re actually just giving them the chargers and they don’t have cell phones, and we’re just going to collect some data. That’s going to be a lot of fun. But yeah, we’re putting on airplane mode for that.

Chris Kresser: That’s cool. So you can put it in, I didn’t know that. So you can put it in airplane mode, just wear it for a week, and then sync it and check your data for that last week.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly. Yeah, and so we’ll make some better instructions in how to show people that it’s there. But if you just, there’s an area in the app where you can click on sort of the battery in the top right, the power setting. And if you click it there, you’ll see a button to turn it.

Chris Kresser: I see it. Ring, airplane mode. I see it right now.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Cool.

Harpreet Rai: And then you just pop it in the charger and it’ll take it out of airplane mode.

Chris Kresser: Now what’s your take on, just to put this in perspective for people, like what sort of, what amount of EMF is this submitting relative to other types of devices that people are using, like a smartphone?

Harpreet Rai: Sure, yeah. So I think one way, I am sort of a sciencey and I guess engineering-type mindset, so I do believe in sort of energy can't be created or destroyed, it’s just sort of transferred. So we have a tiny battery inside this ring. We have a, let’s call it a 15-milliamp battery. And so what does that mean? Well, your iWatch has a battery that’s five times bigger than that and your iPhone has a battery that's almost 50 times bigger than that. And then you think about, okay, well, how quickly is that battery consumed? Well my iWatch’s battery lasts about a day. My iPhone’s battery lasts about a day. And so where is the energy going? And my Oura Ring lasts about a week. And so our battery is sort of, think about it from a physics perspective, 150th the size, and it lasts six times longer than your iPhone. And so the amount of EMF is honestly pretty small. I think we do use a lot of energy, but we focus it in infrared light.

Again, one of the things that we found when using certain types of frequency of light to detect your pulse is that everything we know about infrared light is actually healthy for us. So that was a very conscious decision. And so I would say compared to other devices, it's anywhere from sort of 1/10th to 1/100th of the EMF compared to other wearables or your phone.

Chris Kresser: And then if you don't, I mean, the airplane mode is pretty cool. Because I don't necessarily check my data every morning because I, like I said, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I'm kind of in pretty good tune with what's happening. But I'll usually do it, like, for a period of time when I'm doing an experiment. I might check it for a few days in a row or something like that. But I like the idea that you could easily, you could just put it in airplane mode and then just check it at the end of three days or something when you want to see what's going on, if anyone is worried about that.

Harpreet Rai: Yep. And look, we also know that, we’ve seen it from our users, those that are pretty focused on EMF or some of them might be more immunocompromised, that they actually use Oura Ring as a way to sort of check if there’s almost too much EMF and things that they can do and see if it has an impact. So we have some people that have gone sort of full, almost the caging around the bed and changing the type of outputs they have, and they’ve seen an improvement in their sleep because of it.

And we’ve seen also people just send us messages like, “Hey, I normally would leave my laptop on in the bedroom, but then I started to turn it off and put it downstairs. And actually saw my heart rate variability improve, my deep sleep improve.” And so that they are getting a consequence of EMF. And it’s definitely not the case for everyone. I think some people are more sensitive to EMF, but we did make that Bluetooth, that airplane mode for people who were concerned about it.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, I mean, I definitely see it in my patients, and I think probably a lot of people are sensitive to some degree. Not to the extent that you hear about in some cases, and that I've seen with some of my patients. But I think that's probably one factor for when you go camping. Just not being exposed to as much of that or looking at screens as much, for whatever the effects of that are.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. I’m curious, actually, just for you, Chris, as a Functional Medicine doctor, how do you explain how important sleep is to your patients? Like, I have a lot of friends ask me now, as they know, like friends I had from college or high school, and they’ll be like, “Well, how much sleep do you get? Or why does that even matter if you get eight hours or six hours or even five?” How do you normally explain it? Because there’s some cool stuff in sort of the metabolic pathways that you know much better than I do, that I love to give examples to. I’m just curious how.

Chris Kresser: I generally try to keep it pretty simple. I mean, it depends who’s asking, and I try to tailor the answer to what this other person is asking. If it’s someone who’s really data driven, I might give a data-driven answer. If it’s someone who’s less educated about all this stuff, I will try to keep it simple. But I mean, one way to look at it is you can survive for quite a long time without food. Thirty days, more than that. There are people who’ve survived for much longer than that without food. You can survive without water for a lot shorter period of time.

If you’re completely deprived of sleep, meaning you don’t get any at all, you’re not going to survive for very long. And sleep deprivation can absolutely wreak havoc on every system of the body, even if every other aspect of your diet, behavior, and lifestyle is completely optimized. It's the dealbreaker of all dealbreakers, where no matter how well you're doing, everything else—you can have the perfect diet, perfect physical activity routine, perfectly managing stress during the day, perfect relationships, time outdoors, sun exposure, everything that we talk about—and if you're not sleeping enough, all of that is going.

It’s not like those things will be not helpful in some way. Obviously, you’d be a lot worse off if you weren’t doing those things right as well, but it's a dealbreaker. It will torpedo all of your other best efforts. And as far as we know, there are definitely people who can get by on, in the range, from every sleep scientist I’ve talked to, is seven to eight hours for the majority of people. And you have your outliers who can get six for an extended period of time be okay, and people who need nine. But they’re a lot more less common than, and there are a lot more people out there who think they’re an outlier who aren’t.

That’s the biggest problem. Everybody thinks they’re in that outlier category, but given the definition of outlier, that can't be possible.

Harpreet Rai: Everyone thinks they’re an exceptional and great driver, but they totally can’t be.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, so that's usually how I describe it, and then it’s, the problem, though, is that it’s, as you know, Harpreet, is it’s a systemic issue. It’s not as simple as changing your diet even, or taking a supplement or a pill. Like, changing your sleep, you often have to examine some pretty deep core beliefs and assumptions that we’re making about who we are.

Take someone who is a workaholic, who might have had a childhood where they grew up in a family that valued that, that achievement. And their self-worth is based on what they accomplish. And that, then they became a workaholic. And so for them, not sleeping is a function of some very deep childhood conditioning. So it's not just a question of like, “Oh, yeah, okay, I'll sleep more.” So I think it's not so much a question of education or information in a lot of cases that is the obstacle to changing the behavior; it's that behavior change is hard and is often dependent on really deeply rooted beliefs that are not amenable, that don't change just by being provided information, I guess, is what I would say about that.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, no, I think that’s an awesome way to explain it, and I'll probably borrow a lot of that when people ask me.

Chris Kresser: Sure.

Harpreet Rai: I agree, I think it's a really, as far as yeah the benefits or the damages of poor sleep, it is incredible how it affects literally every part of the body and mind. So I always, I guess for the friends that I have that are often keto and working out quite a bit, I sort of say what you said but in a way that, “Hey, did you know actually that half your growth hormone and your testosterone is released at night?” And if you’re compromising that, to your point, yeah, you can be working out great and eating foods that we know are healthful and enhancing muscle growth or setting you up for higher amounts of testosterone. But actually, you’re going to compromise that when you sleep.

Or for the workaholics, I’m a workaholic, and it is a hard thing. It’s something that I’ve, to your point, my dad was a workaholic and sort of thought that, oh, you always had to be up late studying and working hard.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: I think about it like memory recall. Well, if you get less than six hours of sleep, literally, your memory recall goes down almost by 30 or 40 percent for the next day. So yeah, and I think this needs to change in the corporate world, and I think thankfully, there’s people like you that are bringing awareness to this and implementation to this with some of the corporate wellness world. But I literally, it’s like, okay, so Google or Facebook or Goldman Sachs, if you’re paying people to be there until midnight every night, like, they’re going to remember less the next day. They’re going to be, they’re actually going to be, I almost want to say dumber the next day.

Chris Kresser: For sure, dumber, yeah.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. When you start thinking about that as someone who’s, like a lot of your listeners are, like, focused on being more productive and being more effective at work, I think that’s like, it’s really important to understand some of that science. And oftentimes I do feel like, yeah, we keep trying to push ourselves in some shape or form, push ourselves to be better athletes, even just recreational, push ourselves to sort of work harder and push ourselves even socially to be there for others we know and just to hang out and spend time with loved ones and friends.

And so I guess the way I always, that someone said to me that really resonated is, “Well, if you’re not getting enough sleep, you’re not the best version of yourself the next day.” You’re literally doing a disservice to you. Just like you said about being present and being in the moment, you’re really going to value those experiences that you’re present for. It’s the same thing, like, you’re really going to value those days that you’re really present for and that you’re able to perform at your best for. Those are the days that you really get it locked on. And it’s just hard to remember that like you said, when I think so many people from such a young age are being told to push and work as hard as they can. And that comes with a compromise of sleep.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, and it might seem ironic to use technology to reduce your use of technology or create more balance in your life. But I think technology is just a tool. It's up to us how we employ it, and I am a big fan of using some technologies to create more balance. The Oura Ring is good example.

There’s another good example which is the Moment app, which maybe has been superseded or at least Apple with iOS 12 now has some of their own features for helping people to increase their awareness of how much they're using their phone and to put some sort of guide rails around that and have more control over notifications and the do-not-disturb mode at night, which I think we can be cynical about it, and that's a technology company doing that, but I think it's a good move.

Harpreet Rai: Without a doubt.

Chris Kresser: It shows some sign of corporate responsibility for the impact that these devices are having, and so let's use the technology wisely in a way that it can actually support us.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, there’s a great … well, we’ll have to link to it in the show notes if it’s still up on the internet. Tristan Harris, I think when he started sort of bringing up this effort and broaching the subject that these things are designed to be addictive, all these apps and all these services like Netflix, he did this study I think. And they took 200,000 people that had iPhones and had all these apps installed on the phone. And they literally looked app by app and they said, “Does this app make you happy? Or does it make you sad or unhappy?” And what they found was the response on whether Netflix makes you happy or not was directly correlated with how much time you actually spent in it.

So something like if you’re spending under, I think, 40 minutes a day in Netflix, people actually were like, “Oh, yeah, I’m pretty happy. I watched something funny, I watched something that’s entertaining, maybe I’m watching a documentary, I’m learning more, or I’m just watching something with friends. I feel pretty happy.” But those who were spending, like, I think, more than 50 minutes, it was a pretty clear indicator that they were unhappy. And so I totally think it’s great that now Apple and, I think, Google announced a similar initiative. I don’t know if it’s launched yet, but about trying to show people that their usage in these apps is putting up those guide rails so you don’t overextend yourself and honestly do damage to your body and your mind.

What's Next for the Oura Ring

Chris Kresser: Yeah, exactly. So you mentioned that one thing that was coming for Oura, which is HRV tracking during the day. What else are you guys working on? I imagine you have some ideas cooking back there.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, I mean, there are some small things. We’ve recently done, we just started actually importing activities and help from HealthKit. So for those who use some of the other devices or apps for tracking their workouts or using Strava or using a bike that’s hooked up to some sort of Garmin connect that’s tracking the output on your bike, now that activity data is flowing into Oura. Even if it’s something small.

The meditation mode, yes, that’ll be a larger effort that we’ll release later this year, being able to track sort of your heart rate and heart rate variability during a meditation session. And then honestly, also go a step further. Start helping people find more correlations. So, hey, those days that you actually meditated, did you get more deep sleep? And so that is probably going to be a good first step for us in this correlation angle on the app and the user experience. So we want users to start finding an easy way to correlate their choices and see if it’s helping or hurting their sleep. So certain days that you did weightlifting, let’s say, versus cardio. Or certain days if you were at the gym once a week versus three times a week, did you have a better week of sleep? So helping people find those correlations, that’ll be something we introduce in the app as well.

There is another effort that we’re undergoing, and I think this will be a fun one for users. We’re going to introduce a concept called Oura Labs. And so the idea of Oura Labs is actually taking, call it a group of willing Oura Ring participants, where we’ll go have them wear blue light blocking glasses for two weeks and then take them off for two weeks and see the change in their data. I think a lot of us, we do that individually and we’re able to see it, but sometimes it can be more powerful and a good reminder when you see that data with others in a larger amount of people. So I think that'll be something else you see us start to do more as a company.

Chris Kresser: That's cool. Well we’ve got a lot of people in my audience that are doing lots of experiments and I'm sure would love to participate. So if you need any folks for your study, let us know and we’ll help you out.

Harpreet Rai: Totally.

Chris Kresser: So yeah, this has been a fascinating conversation. And just so, it’s so great to have these new technologies available to us that we can use to actually support our health and well-being. Because so much of technology is actually, as we’ve talked about during the show, has the opposite effect. So it's cool to be able to use it in a different way that actually leads to us making better choices that support our health. And so thanks for everything that you guys are doing at Oura to make that possible. And I understand you have generously created a coupon for our audience if they want to order a ring and save a little money.

How You Can Get $50 off Your Oura Ring Purchase

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, that's right. So we are giving a coupon to your audience for $50 off for when you buy the ring if you're a follower of Chris and everything that you and your practice does. Yeah, we wanted to offer that for $50 off. I forget, what was the code that we wanted to go with?

Chris Kresser: I think it was HIH, did you say?

Harpreet Rai: No, I think we were going to do just I think KRESSER, right?

Chris Kresser: All right, KRESSER sounds good. That’s better. I was reading that off an email but it might’ve been from something else. And I just want to let everyone know, I have no financial relationship with Oura other than receiving the ring to test out. I bought my own. I don’t make any money from this. I’m just sharing products with you that I found to be helpful myself and with my patients. So hopefully it’s useful. And Harpreet, thanks so much again for joining us. And I’d love to have you back in a couple years or so, and we’ll see, I’m sure there’ll be a lot of new stuff to talk about by then.

Harpreet Rai: Totally, yeah. Chris, thanks a ton for having us on. I really appreciate it and frankly, thanks for bringing a lot of awareness just to, about people and their health and improving their health and wellness. And also on sleep. I think as we both agree, people are getting less of it and honestly it's hurting us in our lives. And so I appreciate you also just being an advocate for it in the community.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely. Okay, everybody, thanks for listening. Continue to send in your questions, ChrisKresser.com/podcastquestion. I know we’ve been doing a lot of interviews. I have done a few Q&A episodes lately and we’ll continue to do them. So please do send them in, and even if I don't answer them directly in the podcast, we sometimes write blog articles and it just kind of informs what I'm doing. It helps me to know what you’re thinking about and want to know about. So please do keep sending those in and we’ll talk to you next time.

Harpreet Rai: Thanks, Chris. Take care.

Chris Kresser: Thank you.

Ready to take control of your sleep habits? Choose your Oura Ring and enter the coupon code “KRESSER” at checkout for $50 off your purchase.

The post RHR: How to Use Tech to Improve Your Sleep, with Harpreet Rai appeared first on Chris Kresser.

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shapesnnsizes · 6 years

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RHR: How to Use Tech to Improve Your Sleep, with Harpreet Rai

In this episode, we discuss:

What the Oura Ring can do

The importance of sleep

Why your brain needs downtime

Using technology to improve your health

How to measure your stress levels

How your sleep reflects the way you spent your day

What’s next for the Oura Ring

How you can get $50 off your Oura Ring purchase

Show notes:

Oura Ring

“Sleep Quality and Adolescent Default Mode Network Connectivity.”

Learning How to Learn from Coursera

The Moment app

The Center for Humane Technology from Tristan Harris

youtube

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Hey, everybody, Chris Kresser here. Welcome to another episode of Revolution Health Radio. This week I’m excited to welcome Harpreet Rai as my guest. He is the CEO of Oura Ring.

Chris Kresser: Harpreet, such a pleasure to finally have you on the show. I’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.

Harpreet Rai: Likewise, Chris. Yeah, it was awesome to connect early in the year at Paleo f(x), and glad we finally got to reconnect now.

Harpreet Rai: Okay, nice.

Harpreet Rai: Sure.

Harpreet Rai: Right.

What the Oura Ring Can Do

The Importance of Sleep

Chris Kresser: That’d be a trillion-dollar pill.

Harpreet Rai: It would probably be the biggest and most successful drug ever.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Why Your Brain Needs Downtime

Harpreet Rai: I think Tristan Harris, he’s—

Chris Kresser: Former Google.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly. Like, I forget his exact title though. The chief ethical officer? I’m not entirely sure.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, yeah.

Harpreet Rai: But yeah, these things are getting more and more addicting. I use, I think over a billion people use Chrome, the web browser.

Chris Kresser: Right, yes.

Chris Kresser: You’re worth more to advertisers.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely, 100 percent.

Using Technology to Improve Your Health

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: I mean, frankly, your example of a snack before bed, I have no problem putting this out there. I love ice cream. I think a lot of Americans do.

Chris Kresser: What’s not to like?

Harpreet Rai: What’s not to like? I think it’s something like, guess how many pounds of ice cream the average American eats in a year.

Chris Kresser: Oh, it’s probably …

Harpreet Rai: Take a guess.

Chris Kresser: Jeez, I don’t know. Let’s see, 100?

Harpreet Rai: Oh, no, it’s not that bad.

Chris Kresser: I think it would be. If you think about, like, if they’re only eating, if that was the only source of sugar, it probably would.

Harpreet Rai: Sure, oh, of course, yeah. I think it’s something like 23 pounds.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: So or …

Chris Kresser: Twenty pounds is an enormous amount of ice cream, though.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

How to Measure Your Stress Levels

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: That’s fun. I’ve been able to track that, and that’s really fun to see that response.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, that’s something we’re going to be introducing in the Oura Ring, as well, during a session.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. Look, I think it comes back to that ice cream example. It’s actionable.

Chris Kresser: Right.

Chris Kresser: Yeah, I bet that helped with the ice cream too.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah. Yes.

Chris Kresser: The combination of the CGM and the Oura Ring.

Harpreet Rai: Exactly.

Chris Kresser: It makes you think two or three times about the ice cream.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: I’ve got to say, that's what kept me from using it initially.

Harpreet Rai: This unit? Yeah.

Harpreet Rai: Right, yeah.

Chris Kresser: They just assume it’s a ring that I’m wearing because I like to wear rings. That works for me.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: That’s a pretty strong correlation.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: For people who are not familiar with data and that kind of measurement, that’s a pretty true fidelity.

Chris Kresser: A bad night’s sleep.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, a bad night’s sleep or let’s say something else woke you up, like I live in the city in San Francisco with cars honking outside.

Chris Kresser: Your seven-year-old daughter coming in and pulling you out of bed. Yeah, any number of things.

Chris Kresser: Of course, yeah.

Harpreet Rai: And it should.

Chris Kresser: It’s a stressor on the body. That’s how it works.

Chris Kresser: And that’s traditionally how HRV has been used with athletes to determine how long they need to rest and recover before they work out again.

How Your Sleep Reflects the Way You Spent Your Day

A Feldenkrais practitioner that I did some training with at one point said the same thing. Like, if you want to sleep well, you have to manage your stress levels throughout the day.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Full stop.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Absolutely.

Harpreet Rai: That’s scary.

Chris Kresser: That’s cool. So you can put it in, I didn’t know that. So you can put it in airplane mode, just wear it for a week, and then sync it and check your data for that last week.

Chris Kresser: I see it. Ring, airplane mode. I see it right now.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: Cool.

Harpreet Rai: And then you just pop it in the charger and it’ll take it out of airplane mode.

That’s the biggest problem. Everybody thinks they’re in that outlier category, but given the definition of outlier, that can't be possible.

Harpreet Rai: Everyone thinks they’re an exceptional and great driver, but they totally can’t be.

Harpreet Rai: Yeah, no, I think that’s an awesome way to explain it, and I'll probably borrow a lot of that when people ask me.

Chris Kresser: Sure.

Chris Kresser: Yeah.

Chris Kresser: For sure, dumber, yeah.

Harpreet Rai: Without a doubt.

Chris Kresser: It shows some sign of corporate responsibility for the impact that these devices are having, and so let's use the technology wisely in a way that it can actually support us.

What's Next for the Oura Ring

Harpreet Rai: Totally.

How You Can Get $50 off Your Oura Ring Purchase

Chris Kresser: I think it was HIH, did you say?

Harpreet Rai: No, I think we were going to do just I think KRESSER, right?

Harpreet Rai: Thanks, Chris. Take care.

Chris Kresser: Thank you.

Ready to take control of your sleep habits? Choose your Oura Ring and enter the coupon code “KRESSER” at checkout for $50 off your purchase.

The post RHR: How to Use Tech to Improve Your Sleep, with Harpreet Rai appeared first on Chris Kresser.

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jmrphy · 7 years

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“I Think We're Really Onto Something:” Mark Fisher and My Revolutionary Friends

Mark Fisher was a revolutionary, but I do not mean his writings were revolutionary (although they were); I mean that Mark Fisher was a revolutionary in a very specific sense of the word, a sense that does not necessarily apply to everyone who happens to be sympathetic to radical ideas or causes. We know this because, over the past two years, we have not just been friends with Mark. A number of us have been, together, in the process of concrete, organized, revolutionary political transformations. These transformations remain somewhat obscure, and before Mark’s death I did not fully comprehend what he and all of us in Plan C have been doing over these past couple of years. But now, for me at least, Mark’s death has been like a flash of emotional lightning that suddenly illuminates a dark forest pulsing with life, revealing with undeniable clarity where one even is. In an email, Mark once wrote to us: “I think we’re really onto something…” I think he was right, in fact I think he was more right than any of us have known what to do with. With Mark’s passing I believe I can see more clearly now than ever what exactly we have been onto. To be honest, I did not know Mark well, and I have only a passing familiarity with his writing; that I have so much to say can only be attributed to the political processes that have been, over the past few years, sweeping a few of us away, together.

Mark always struck me as the type whose opposition to the status quo was such that he sincerely thought, felt, and lived as if it could not be so. For some people, opposition to the status quo can be a form of adaptation and survival. For these people, activism provides socio-psychological supports that make the experience of the status quo tolerable. But others are plagued with a humanity that will not go away no matter what you offer it, a certain inability to accept the status quo, an incapacity to integrate oneself into its consistency, resulting in a kind of maladaption risking rather than securing survival. For these types, entry into radical politics is not about making life livable under unlivable conditions, it is about figuring out how to produce genuinely livable conditions at any cost. This is a subtle but crucial difference: the former model waters down the definition of what is considered “living” in order to survive and claim we are “living,” while the latter admits plainly the unfortunate but real challenge of an unjust political order: either overthrow unlivable institutions and make life together possible immediately, or we will already be dead.

In my own view, everything seems to suggest that the truly revolutionary life today must be of the latter type; it would seem that revolutionary politics today could not be anything other than a kind of minimally sustainable, reproducible type of militant maladaption, the capacity to creatively occupy oneself as something that consciously and purposely does not belong to nearly all of that which is currently and falsely called reality. But obviously individual human organisms have limits and this tendency can lead to self-destruction; one question we have therefore been grappling with is, how to sustain this kind of creative maladaption over time, how to make revolutionary maladaption socially reproducible.

It seems to me that, in his intellectual work, Mark sought actively to inhabit this heady, scandalous mental space in which everything people call real is, clearly, not real. Exciting and true, but anyone who has ever sought to engage in radical intellectual work over a period of time learns quickly that this parallax is quite a load on the nervous system, because every interaction in our really existing Boring Dystopia will require far more emotional and cognitive stress than would be required if one simply took the Boring Dystopia to be real. Now, if we have any hope of living a true life together then we must at all cost hold onto this heady, stressful, critical distance. But I think one thing Mark understood was that there do exist tactics and techniques for making true life possible despite everything. I think Mark was a maestro of such tactics, not just because I got to observe him performing them (as I will sketch below), but because to do his kind of radical theory over any period of time. you need them. That he was able to write all of those words on topics such as mental health and capitalism, in that dangerous and difficult mental space he was most known for, is evidence enough that he possessed some mastery of how to power a life that is not being fueled in the conventional way through complacent, adaptive negotiation with the status quo.

I should say at the outset that I am not interested in claiming Mark for any particular thesis or agenda; like any genuine, radical intellectual, I am sure he thought many different things that he never brought to perfect coherence. Yet I do believe, for a number of reasons I will try to articulate, that Mark was especially interested in this question about the interpersonal and social tactics that transform individual and group consciousness into weapons that perform concretely revolutionary work (however slowly and invisibly at first) on even the largest-scale political and economic institutions.

One reason I know Mark was keen on this point is that he told me so. I remember one time he was telling me about the most recent book project he had been working on. I asked him about the thesis. He summarized it by saying something to the effect of, ”Basically, 1970s socialist feminism had it all figured out.” We can debate what he might have meant by this, but I believe he had in mind especially the feminist consciousness-raising groups prevalent at the time. Even more specifically, I think Mark was interested in how these groups—dedicated to the sharing and making visible of once silent, privatized struggles—really worked, not just for “therapy” or the now more chic “self-care” but as a bona fide methodology for producing large-scale, revolutionary political change at the systemic level. The various movements of this one particular historical moment were crushed, yes, but the point is that it worked, as far as it went. Of course, there will be opponents and enemies, but the basic method is a real, concrete, and reproducible way for even lonely individuals and small groups to immediately begin the overthrow of dominant institutions.

My memory of his characteristic, nervous excitement seemed to be saying, like, “We already know what to do! Next time, this time, we just have to figure out how not to get crushed!” That is, we have to figure out a number of auxilliary questions that our revolutionary predecessors had not fully worked out—such as how to expand, aggregate, and materially reproduce consciousness-raising dynamics against powerful reactionary forces and agents—but as to the basic nature of revolutionary movement, its primary source and destination as an actual activity human beings can do, we already know it. It is the concrete, immanent process of human beings seeking, through each other, their true consciousness. That might sound woo-woo, but I will argue that the status quo reproduces itself in large part by making this proposition seem woo-woo. Our fear of being naïve, our fear of wagering too much on our own immediate shared consciousness—more and more I think this is the enemy, or at least the single most real and vicious tenterhook that status quo institutions have successfully lodged in our bodies. It seems to me that radicals and activists today may be scrambling to find what is already under their noses, in the historical sense that the 1960s already demonstrated how to produce massive, global, political shockwaves, but also in the immediate interpersonal sense that all we need is exactly whoever is right in front of us.

Another minor exhibit. Within the group, I once wrote an essay that argued consciousness-raising is effectively strike action, the real and concrete withdrawal of cognitive and emotional energy from the status quo. The essay was critical of many basic assumptions of contemporary leftism and I know that Mark was sympathetic to the essay. Interestingly, he was very worried about the backlash I might receive, most likely due to his own ghastly experiences taking risks on the internet (which I consider in more detail below). Of course nothing happened, my article received the much harsher fate of a generally tepid response. Nonetheless, this all suggests to me that what I was trying to articulate in that essay overlaps, at least in some degree, with what Mark had been thinking in recent years. Something difficult and apparently sensitive, something that progressive folks either don’t care about or get very angry about. It all seems to indicate that we are getting closer and closer to understanding what exactly we have been onto.

When one speaks the words “consciousness-raising,” the connotation is so strongly one of New-Age spiritualism that, from a political perspective, the conversation is usually over before it starts. I think the coming years will show this to be an error. Nonetheless, for this reason, I prefer to speak of the physiological and biochemical effects of consciousness tactics; how shared consciousness—if all parties truly take that shared consciousness to be more real than official reality and allow their future thoughts and behaviors to morph accordingly—produces concrete attitudinal and behavioral effects that immanently decrease the power flowing into the institutional center while increasing the autonomous power circulating in the commune of those who compose it. Even better, these tactics come with the exceptional virtue of being immediately palpable in the body and mind when executed correctly, and so they are self-guiding and self-reinforcing. Relationships conducted in this fashion become veritable collective revolution machines capable of spanning vast distances, but only if they are done correctly. Such relationships can and will take infinitely different forms, but I think there is perhaps one hard rule. There will be various implications from this rule, implications which will have to be identified and dealt with creatively depending on the situation, but only one hard requirement. In my own view, I summarize it with the word “honesty,” similar to “conscience” but more secular and relational, like “truth” but less formal and more pluralistic.

In a nutshell, I would venture a possible definition of consciousness-raising as interpersonal communications, on any scale, motivated by nothing but honesty and unconcerned with consequences. By doing this, conciousness-raising is a form of direct action, immediately available between any two people (or more), that withdraws one’s labour from the status quo and immanently produces what you are welcome to call freedom, energy, joy, or power. At a certain resolution these can all be thought of as interchangeable. While this might sound too simple to be serious revolutionary politics, the truth is it’s very difficult and extremely rare. Consider the extraordinary fact that such an orientation is almost impossible to find in activist circles; almost the entirety of contemporary activism is organized around the pursuit of certain consequences, to such a degree that in activist circles if your thoughts and speech are not perceived as contributing to some future consequence, or if you are not minimally able to produce speech that has certain immediate consequences (e.g. making people feel “hope” or appearing “useful”) then you might as well not even be there.

There is massive problem in the activist instinct to organize your thoughts and actions around producing consequences (a fancier term for this is “instrumental rationality,” and it is basically the rationality of modernity and capitalism). The problem is that, in your attachment to those consequences, you are liable to make mistakes and tell lies without even knowing it. And once errors or lies are circulating, however tiny, everything you try to do with anyone will be doomed. First, it leads to the crucial error that you see other human beings as means to some end, whereas in fact the truth is they are ends unto themselves. Humans are not valuable for some purpose, they are the creators of these odd things called values, and if you think about it, that is one of the main reasons why we believe all humans must be free and equal in the first place. But this error is not merely an ethical mistake that does violence to others, it is a practical political mistake also because it blocks revolutionary dynamics before they even have a chance to begin. The whole problem of alienation under capitalism is that we have all been reduced to objects in a system we have no say in. We have to learn how to become revolutionary, from the starting point of having been born as objects, but when we assume that activism means making yourself an object or instrument useful for the goal of producing social change, then we are prohibiting exactly what we really want and need and the only thing that fuels macro social change anyway.

Therefore, it stands to reason that the only possible first step toward transforming the currently existing social system is to create minimal spaces, with at least one other person, in which both parties serve absolutely no purpose. And the only way to create a zone in which all parties serve no other purpose is by committing to the only criterion than can possibly attune diverse atomized individuals: honesty. Honesty converts the most diverse individuals to the only unification that preserves all of their differences; everyone can be as radically different as they please, and yet attuned around the only thing they truly all share, namely, the objective fact that none are objects to any of the others but all are their own autonomous ends, that all are recognized as the creators of themselves, ultimately subordinate to nothing. If this feels uncmofortably “individualistic” for altruistic types, I need only remind you that this only works as a collective activity, and the truly autonomous individual immediately recognizes this individuality as a gift of the community. If this feels too simple or easy to be a serious revolutionary politics, I need only remind you that this is harder than you think, so accustomed we are to constantly calculate consequences. Yet it is only in this unique situation of purposelessness that one can exit the state of objecthood under capitalism, in order to experience, if only for a minute, what it feels like to be free. It is horrifying but I genuinely believe there are many people today who have never felt what I am talking about, because the constant mental chatter that is constantly calculating consequences has hijacked our experience of each other to such an extraordinary degree that we don’t even realize it.

Nobody wants to admit their mind and body are so fully hijacked (in part because people won’t like you, etc., i.e. the consequences), so we all continue this horrible state of things in which we actively push away from ourselves and others the only really desirable thing. The other reason I believe there exist many people who have never really grasped or cannot remember this experience is that, feeling or even remembering such an experience forces one to be a revolutionary. If you really know or remember this feeling, you cannot not find yourself foaming at the mouth in opposition to the absurdity, stupidity, and brutality of almost everything currently existing under the label of “reality.” That the average person appears to at least publicly speak and behave as if the offical reality is real—that is data supporting the inference that the very experience of true autonomous existing is itself going extinct. Or maybe everyone knows it, but we’re all too afraid to truly speak and act accordingly. Either way, the upshot is the same: revolutionary politics, in the first and perhaps even final analysis, means nothing other than the immanent production of autonomous communal social power through the basic principle of radical honesty, which implies immediate de-objectification followed by all parties becoming whatever they are (i.e. flourishing). By gaining a collective mastery over this production, how it works and how it breaks, we expand the commune indefinitely.

It is worth remembering that the world-historical revolution of capitalism itself, which overthrew feudalism, operated on precisely these terms. Whatever we might say about the inhumane consequences of capitalism, the pioneering individuals whose attitudes and behaviors would lead to generalized capitalist society were: highly creative, courageous individuals (in the sense of defying social expectations) who met in new and uncharted zones (the cities), who acted to manipulate the nature of reality by leveraging new forms of knowledge and new forms of technology that the traditional status quo repressed. They started in small groups, sometimes as individuals and sometimes in small networks of oath-bound individuals. Fearlessness, creativity, trust, and the purposeful alteration of social reality in a way that no one’s ever done before, produced a world-historical revolution. There’s no reason capitalism can’t be overthrown by the same type of operations, this time geared toward the the truth of our being rather than dishonest material interests in commanding nature and each other.

Most of what most people do generates nothing but their own misery, and bad faith converts this misery into only a minimally tolerable survival (and even this minimum appears increasingly hard to maintain). Almost everything that passes for education today is essentially false. Most human relationships, at least in the overdeveloped world, range from empty to shit, as the number of our weak relationships has increased and the number of our deep relationships has decreased. And even the best benefits you can get from the status quo—if you’re really lucky, privileged, and/or do everything by the rules—don’t even give you that much security nowadays. These are some reasons why today, it is in some of our own lived relationships that we see not merely potential, but rather the site of currently unfolding revolutionary dynamics we are only beginning to decipher.

I am writing this on the day that Donald Trump is being inaugurated as the President of the United States. There is something significant in the fact that I’m thinking far more about Mark Fisher and my revolutionary friends than I am about Donald Trump and the government of the United States.

There’s this long-standing assumption that educated, progressive individuals should pay close attention to national and international news, but if high-level politics and what is called the news are both institutionally and ideologically locked down to an unprecedented degree—as I would argue they are—then I believe that today, educated and progressive individuals will increasingly learn the courage to unhinge their attunement from what is effectively at this point mere noise in the social system. I think one of the discoveries some of us have been making recently is that, when you do this, in conjunction with doubling down on your attunement to dearest friends and comrades, so long as they are also honestly attuned to you, then fundamentally new energies emerge into this new collective entity-machine-project that feels quite literally out of this world. I don’t mean this in a woo-woo, spiritual way, I mean fundamental physiological, biochemical effects are triggered that then ripple out into speech and behaviors in organic ways tending to the overthrow of institutions.

For people who see short and easy proclamations on social media as the key gauge of someone’s political life, I am happy to give you 30 seconds to type that I think Donald Trump is very bad and, whatever it is, I’m against it. But I’m conserving my energy for larger projects; for my living, intimate accomplices and my revolutionary friends dead and alive. The big center is a massive, empty zone filled with little more than the fears of those who incorrectly believe there is still something there. Mark’s death is teaching me that, more and more I want to wager everything on my friends, and that means moving investments away from the big empty center of this dead society into the spaces, times, and experiences that you have the concrete ability to fill with power. None of this is an attack on other styles, it’s just to remind everyone that silence is not always complicity and indeed it is sometimes the mark of a groundswell you may just not know how to interpret.

That Mark and many of us have been onto something different, ever so slightly different but crucially, categorically different, is nicely measured by the reception of Mark’s infamous essay on the Vampire’s Castle. First, I think time has shown that essay to be way more correct than incorrect. I’m very sorry but anyone I know who has half-honestly watched the sociology of left internet discourse evolve over the past few years will agree on this point in private. Many remain afraid to say it, but with Mark’s passing this feels more important than ever to just put on the record. I remember following the whole fiasco when it happened, before I even knew Mark, and I thought it was absurd but I didn’t dare to say so. That’s shameful and embarrassing. Any self-respecting adult has to call bullshit wherever they honestly see bullshit, in public, without apologies. I know way too many people, myself included (although I’m trying to end this), who won’t say in public really important thoughts and feelings they have about various habits and tendencies prevalent in what passes for radical or progressive politics today. I won’t argue it here, because anyone who would be offended by what I’m suggesting almost certainly won’t be convinced and most people whose opinions and judgments I know and respect know what I’m talking about or at least accept and respect my comradely right to say what I think without apology. And here’s where this gets real: the truth is I wouldn’t even be writing this if I wasn’t at this very moment embedded in real liberatory dynamics with others who I know have my back because they are themselves flying on the same winds.

A little story I haven’t told many people. I have this draft book manuscript and Mark once invited me to share it with him. He was one of the first people I had ever shared it with, and honestly it is a pretty scrappy and highly idiosyncratic project that I could not have imagined appealing to anyone. But of course he loved it, or at least pretended to love it. His encouragement could not have come at a better time, it was a really long and dark period of nothing but rejections and failures on all other fronts, intellectual and personal. His interest in the book was maybe my most positive achievement I had in the entire year of 2014 – 2015. And again, where many people might only see a minor act of kindness, I think there is something much more substantial, if we can learn to see it.

Dispensing encouragement to younger people can be a world-transforming political action. And if there’s one thing that emerges from all of the beautiful tributes that have been written recently, Mark appears to have done this on an almost industrial scale. I was somewhat humbled to learn I am not so special, but impressed to learn that Mark appears to have been on some kind of mission to push forward everyone he possibly could. And you know what, lots of notable radicals or intellectuals or academics are nice people and they try their best to be “supportive” of others, but there are levels to this. This is where, if you look closely enough, you’ll see that people like Mark are not just kind or supportive; he was practicing a revolutionary politics much harder and far more interesting than just being kind.

If you meet someone you admire and they give you some general positive feedback or words of encouragement, the actual transforming effect is going to be conditional on a series of other factors. Typically, you might find it vaguely uplifting and inspiring for a little while. But when someone you admire goes to the same political meetings as you, and sits around before and after just like you, somewhat awkward, somewhat terrified of recent news, and personally, vulnerably desperate to change everything that currently exists, with you, well you know what? It changes everything. The effect is totally different, far more powerful, far more lasting. And it matters when radicals are also respected in more status quo hierarches—while of course there is so much to criticize about those hierarchies. When people such as Mark, who could be off writing cool books or seeking an academic promotion, are going to the same meetings as you because they genuinely want to make revolution now, it produces a unique effect. And I think that’s because no matter how radical we are, we cannot help but be affected differently depending on where a signal is coming from within the social status hierarchy. Placement in the social status hierarchy should mean nothing whatsoever for how we value or treat each other, my point is just that when people possess status quo cultural capital and they are choosing to invest themselves in the hard work of organized revolutionary politics, this is something relatively rare and it produces unique effects that deserve to be appreciated.

It is these types of interpersonal activities that generate irrevocable anthropological transformations. Mark’s interest in my book was not just “encouraging”—it effectively supported my entire will for almost a year at a time when so many rejections were really making me wonder whether I was maybe just dumb or crazy. But also it altered the course of my life, to make me more invested in the real, immediate actualization of revolutionary political change, because our relationship was one defined by a revolutionary organization and if I felt indebted to Mark’s support what that really meant was I was indebted to keep figuring out how to make revolution. I’m fully aware how absurd this might sound to others, but think about it. Since that time, I’ve had some modest academic success in my bullshit bourgeois career, which means my precious ego and income are pretty secure at the moment, so this is exactly when most people start to drift from their youthful radical politics toward a comfortable integration with the status quo. I have every social, financial, and cultural reason to now just kick back and enjoy my permanent academic post. But now I can’t do that, and I’m happy I can’t do that, but the reason is because through my revolutionary friends I am increasingly and irrevocably indebted to figuring out how to make revolution—to pursue my own liberation means pursuing the liberation of those others who are the concrete, direct generators of the power that has animated me over the past two years.

This is what we are onto. True attention and care, radical honesty and making shared/public that which is hidden, not to make a watered-down life possible within unlivable conditions but as a necessary path to making true life occur now. The politics of “consciousness-raising” is the material process of overthrowing oppressive political institutions at the only point they really exist (where they enter our bodies), by treating each other honestly and never as instruments, thereby generating irrevocably bonded yet autonomous agents and collectives incapable of being consistent with status quo institutions. In my tiny little corner of contemporary Western radical politics, this is exactly what I’ve been doing with Mark and a number of others.

Something about all of the lovely tributes that has given me pause is the tendency to see Mark with somewhat rose-tinted glasses. Don’t get me wrong, Mark was a first-class intellect, an excellent writer, and he made quite an impact on a sizable audience. Many people knew Mark and his work much better than I do, but from where I’m sitting I don’t even see Mark as primarily a writer. To me, Mark was an active revolutionary first and foremost, he just happened to write a lot of things down. I think this is really important because, how do you think anyone becomes an important writer? It’s certainly not by choosing to become an important writer; it is by having some above-average source of interest or energy toward certain questions and writing things down along the way because you need to make sense of things as you go. Personally, I think Mark was interested in how such a rotten set of institutions can perpetuate themselves, and of course the question of how to overthrow them. I see his writings as by-products of the much larger qualities, attitudes and behaviors that made Mark the uniquely important figure he was.

In a comradely way, I would even wonder if there is not something possibly ideological in some of the glowing obituaries of Mark as a writer. As if his obscure, independent k-punk blog became so valuable and influential because of his way with words? I doubt that. And if you want to grow up to be cool and valuable and influential then just start an obscure, independent blog with good words? Maybe, but I think the real reason Mark made a lasting contributon to late 20th century British culture is because he fucking hated capitalism and it was killing him and he actually dared to say so, and to explain how and why, and to actively find others with whom he might take an honest shot at changing everything. If that’s the type of person you are, if that’s how you live, then anything you scribble on the back of a napkin is going to be fascinating, inspiring, useful, and impressive. Not because you’re a good “writer” but almost the opposite, because you care so much more about seeking liberation than being a successful “writer” that you have the freedom and energy to do something real with words. This is a crucial lesson for those interested in pursuing their own path of radical cultural production, but it’s one that tends to be erased in the tropes our cultural industry uses to describe important writers.

No doubt I liked and admired Mark’s writings, but I think Mark would understand my wish to make clear that he was not some sort of super rare genius talent. He wasn’t: he was you. Of course he was smart, and a good writer, but he was also weird and awkward and nervous, like you, like me. I have met certain towering intellects whose mental function is in fact probably something incomparable to what you and I have. Mark was not that type, he was something far more dangerous. He would often say interesting and brilliant things and also things I hardly understood or did not agree with or did not find interesting. I’ve heard people call him a great speaker, and he was certainly quite a speaker, but “great speaker” risks a crucial misunderstanding. He was great fun to listen to and talk with, but he was not a great speaker in the classic sense most people associate with that phrase. He was often quite disorganized, mentally cluttered, elliptical, stuttering, longwinded, and—if we are being honest, and of course we are—sometimes downright incomprehensible.

I remember at a Plan C Congress he gave a talk on some ideas from Operaismo and I left the room with almost no idea what he was trying to say. But the radical insight here is that that can be more politically powerful and sometimes even more fun and cool than “great speakers.” This is exactly the political-psychological mechanics of punk, where it is a lack of certain skills combined with a kind of passionate carelessness that triggers real excitement and empowerment in others, more so than mastery. So to call Mark a “great speaker” risks the very same media-spectacle recuperation that pacified Punk. I’m overjoyed to see Mark becoming a legend even sooner than I would’ve predicted, given the remarkable outpouring of acclaim in the aftermath of his death. But if the effect is to increase the perceived cognitive or performative distance between the average reader and Mark, then that would be unfortunate. What made Mark so interesting and powerful was that he thought what he thought, and he said what he said, because he wanted to, because he was irrepressibly moved to overthrow an intolerable state of things. And he said what he said despite that he had all of the shortcomings and deficiencies of the average person. To hear someone like Mark think all this radical shit, and make all these crazy statements, was so politically electrifying exactly because he was not super gifted and had to struggle against obvious normal difficulties. But he didn’t give a fuck, because he was a revolutionary, and that could be you tomorrow, today.

Or consider what is probably his most famous work, Capitalist Realism. It’s a totally cool little book that’s fun to read and I think it was really useful to a lot of people. But it’s crucial to celebrate it for the right reasons, and avoid those that distort Mark’s unique powers. It was not super original, certainly not systematic or comprehensive, and it gave very little direction on what any of us should do next. Mark wasn’t a genius, he was an interested, passionate, creative person on a search for something real, and that’s so much more revolutionary than mere genius. Again, his work was something you could do, if only you could find the courage and energy to pay attention to what really interests you, and write down what you think, for your friends, precisely without really giving a fuck if its original or systematic or impressive. This is the secret recipe of radical culture that actually produces effects on people, and I’m pretty sure Mark would not mind me reminding people of this.

From my view, I think Mark had a few key insights and I would summarize them as follows. All of this is temporary and it’s not supposed to be like this, but if you look closely you can always find glimmers of life. And it’s necessary to find those glimmers of life and invest in them, and if we all do this honestly and openly than we can and will find a way to change everything. These insights are insights that many of us have deep down inside, he just went after them as if it were a matter of life and death, because it was a matter of life and death, just as it is for us today, whether we feel like facing it now or later.

Mark’s death is teaching me that our revolutionary moment today is so much more real than I thought. Not an abstract potential, but something that is already operating wherever radically true relationships are being formed, if you only know how to pay attention, be honest with yourself and others, and invest your energies wisely. The more you take your attention and energies away from status quo fixations, and divert them into those people genuinely attuned to liberation, then as the dynamics of genuine bonding and belonging take hold, larger collectives can be spun from the two, to the three, and so on. If Mark’s readers trust him as an authority on the political nature of depression, then we should also trust him as an authority on the real and immediately available road to revolutionary transformation that he and I and others have been stumbling down together for the past few years.

There’s nothing magical or sacred about Plan C, which is only one particular group trying to figure these things out; it’s about the discoveries many people are making and are continuing to make, discoveries which anyone can pursue in their own way and on their own terms with anyone around them. This is not a vague appeal for everyone to “come together in love” with everyone around them, not that at all: it is an appeal to break away from all that is wrong and false with ony those you can trust to make of yourselves whatever it is you need to make of yourselves in order that life may occur together now. Not a universal love, but a highly careful and discriminating love—which might very well produce some enemies in the short term—based rigorously only on those principles you honestly believe to produce real dynamics of liberation, and an unflinching refusal of anything else. Not a circle of people singing kumbaya, but a real uprising that honestly feels like an uprising and which creates, almost out of thin air, the very thing you have been seeking all along.

At least for me, this is how it’s working. It’s sad to say, but it might’ve been Mark’s death that has really driven this home to me once and for all. During my last visit to the Plan C group in London, I had the good fortune of spending some quality time with several of my closest friends in that group. In a few moments, spread throughout my visit, I had the distinct feeling that, with those people, I’m truly embedded in a life or death struggle, but at the same time, in those very moments, I felt fully 100% alive and doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. You can’t call it liberation or revolution exactly, because no one is liberated until everyone is liberated, but it was a really unique and overpowering quality or experience of life that I used to think was something that would only come after the revolution, as it were. In these moments I sincerely felt like it was already here, or presently swelling like a wave, like it was actually happening in my body, like we are really doing the only thing that revolution could possibly be: our radically honest best, together. Interestingly, the only time I can remember having this feeling was in the headiest days of Occupy. The reason this is remarkable, and more evidence that indeed we are onto something, is that feelings of revolutionary power are supposedly short-term, fleeting, unsustainable rushes that only come about in rare insurrectionary upsurges such as Occupy—but here I am feeling them in a random pub with E, in another pub with N and A and J and W, on the overground to Tottenham with S, with C and T and A and J and A and S and everyone else at the same Misty Moon where I first met Mark Fisher before a Plan C meeting in 2014. And I still feel them right now, weeks later, even though to the naked eye “nothing is happening.”

In a way that I wouldn’t have said even two weeks ago, it really now does seem to me that we are already doing it. I’ve never seen it so clearly. I do not feel any hope for the future, which I firmly believe is a conservative affect. What I have is an interpretation of where I am and what is going on around me and who exactly are these different people. And I have increasing reasons to believe that my interpretation is true, while the socially dominant interpretation is false. What I also have are concrete tools, reproducible tactics and techniques to make energies flow inside our bodies, tactics I have discovered with my revolutionary friends, whether we have fully realized it or not, tactics that I can now creatively employ to remake every part of the world that I touch. What’s even more remarkable is a peculiar strategic assymetry about these tactics: these are tools that only real revolutionaries can learn, for the simple reason that today one must enter a revolutionary attitude to even access certain basic human experiences prohibited by what is currently called normalcy. Not least of these basic experiences is the one I mentioned above regarding “consciousness-raising,” that most primordial experience of being present with others for no ulterior purpose whatsoever.

That simple and immediately available place of radical honesty and being-unto-ourselves, easy as it sounds, is available only to individuals and groups able to see that it is effectively barred to normal humans adapted to the status quo. Also it is only through radical relationships, attuned and bonded around the honest search for liberation, that currently atomized individuals can gain the courage to take the risks necessary for shooting down this path. When I speak of risks I don’t mean anything grand, I mean even just that blog post you’ve been meaning to write but for some reason you’re just vaguely afraid to post. With honestly revolutionary friends, you stop caring what the Big Other will think, and you say a little more, do a little more, than you normally would—because you actually believe you’re onto something, as your friends are onto it also, and you might be crazy or stupid but you can’t all be crazy and stupid.

Last but not least, you begin to realize that even if everything fails and everything goes wrong, nobody can really touch you, because the truth is most people won’t even know what you’re talking about. At first one’s fear is always that people will respond negatively and punish you for sticking your neck out, but as you learn to do so, buoyed by revolutionary friends, you realize something at once more horrifying and liberating: you are much more likely to be ignored or misunderstood, possibly forever, than maligned and punished. If you’re honest path brings malice against you then you should count yourself lucky, for it means you are certainly onto something. See the Vampire’s Castle. Of course you could also be veering toward evil, always a risk, but again that’s why you’ve invested so much into your revolutionary friends. They will keep you honest without oppressing you.

And let me tell you one of the most beautiful things. If I haven’t made myself clear or you just don’t understand what I’m talking about, I am sorry about that but I also don’t need to care or worry because I know with certainty that at least a few of my comrades will. I’m able to know this with certainty because the only reason I’m able to write this is because of them, so almost by definition they will find themselves in it. Radical political groups are often mocked for being self-referential little spheres, but the only reason this is mock-worthy is because we feel like we have to be accountable to something or someone else outside of those circles. So the inside of those circles can feel sad and guilty and lacking something. What exactly are they lacking, though? Nobody can ever say. We feel like we need to do something more, or do something bigger or better outside of ourselves, and we mock ourselves for being tiny and self-referential only because we judge ourselves from the perspective of some stranger in the big dead center who in fact is not looking at us, and never looks at us. Ironically, the really perverse thing about our little circles is that they are not radically circular enough.

There’s nothing wrong with a small group that makes time and space to see nothing but itself. But the crucial condition for this to become revolutionary, the condition which is so hard to meet, is that such a circle must dare to make its own judgments about what is true and not true, real and not real (not in the sense of one objective truth but in the sense of diverse honesties or consciences), without apology and without paranoia and with absolutely zero respect for the millions of idiotic responses that might come from the massive dead center of society. And then it must dare to really believe and live by those judgments. The capacity to generate charmed circles is an extraordinary political power. All that is necessary from there is to make that circle expandable with a scalable membrane, not to self-loathe the inherently circular nature of a shared world, constantly fearing that we are not already enough for each other.

from Justin Murphy http://ift.tt/2k9yK3F

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