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antoine-roquentin · 3 years

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The popular conception of chivalry, as a moral code guiding the behavior of honorable knights, is flat-out, laughably wrong. That’s a creation of 19th-century authors like Walter Scott, and the popular fantasy authors (basically up until George R.R. Martin) who built on their worldview in the 20th.

In reality, chivalry was all about one particular version of Guys Being Dudes. Chivalry could refer to a few different things, but the most common meaning was simply battlefield deeds, executed with some style. This, what knights referred to as “prowess,” was at the core of the broader ideology of chivalry: raw, bloody, physical performance, violence done effectively and to an agreed-upon aesthetic standard. The second major concern of chivalry, honor, grew directly out of the first. Honor wasn’t an abstract concept to medieval knights; it was a possession, a recognition of their particular status and place in the social hierarchy, which they were well within their rights to violently defend and assert through their prowess. Piety was the icing on the cake, but no knight really doubted that God approved of their actions.

An oral culture, passed around during training sessions and drinking bouts and feasts and military campaigns, produced this culture and inculcated new knights into it. A whole universe of texts, the kinds of things knights read or had read to them, sent the same message, like this 12th-century poem called Girart de Vienne:

When I see the whinnying war-steeds plunge

With worthy knights into a battle’s crush,

And see their spears and cutting blades well struck,

There is nothing on earth I love so much!

These were dudes who loved getting after it, and for them, getting after it meant blood-soaked deeds on the battlefield. It’s not that there was nothing more to it - sure, there were some bits about romance and ladies, debates about religiosity and moral actions, exhortations to do better - but the core was always physical, male violence. And it obviously wasn’t for everyone: Knights were members of a hereditary military aristocracy, and their possession of chivalry was what set them apart from dirty peasants.

Two aspects neatly parallel modern Bro Culture: first, the emphasis on physicality and the body, and how that provided both a sense of the self and secured social status; and second, the restricted, bubble-like world that produced and emphasized it, with its fictional and real heroes, its stories about great deeds, its values, and its models to be emulated. Your average knight would absolutely identify with and appreciate this impossibly toxic meathead sentiment:

Obviously, there are pieces that don’t neatly parallel, the biggest ones being the hereditary and explicitly military nature of chivalry. You don’t have to be a soldier to be a Bro, though it doesn’t hurt. And - much more important - you aren’t born into being a Bro; you become one, by doing worthy deeds of prowess.

That’s a quintessentially American value: the idea that anybody can make something of themselves if they work hard enough, move enough weight, run fast enough, practice enough to shoot a tight grouping, make the right sacrifices. The physical meritocracy (and its potential rewards of fame and fortune) is open to anyone willing to do whatever it takes to climb the ladder. Even the least intellectually gifted meathead can make something of himself if he does the workouts, takes the right gear, and builds his audience on YouTube and Instagram. Don’t forget to like and subscribe, and smash that follow button.

In a moment of stagnant social mobility, rising inequality, and incredible uncertainty around the future, this strongly visual message of self-betterment and improving one’s socioeconomic status through literal sweat can resonate deeply. It’s all within the individual’s control, if they simply work enough - an antidote to all that uncertainty, everything that’s so obviously beyond an individual’s control and reckoning, no matter how misleading and incomplete the formula actually is.

That’s especially appealing to the many millions of American men who don’t have college degrees (many more of them than women, given the gendered trends in undergraduate enrollment) who are effectively locked out of professional-managerial culture and its straightforward path into the comfortable upper-middle class. Accomplishment through physical prowess is thus a means of building both a sense of self and community.

The connections to this particular moment in American culture and history go much deeper than that, though. This whole edifice of Bro Culture grows out of the broader rise of influencers, performative self-branding through social media, and the construction of identity through consumption.

With the right protein powder, shilled by your favorite strongman, you too can deadlift 800 pounds, or at least tell yourself you’ll get there someday. With the right brand of CBD tincture, which sponsors your favorite Crossfit athlete, you won’t feel that burning pain in your rotator cuff after you clean and jerk too much weight with suboptimal technique. By religiously listening to the right Bro-approved entrepreneurship podcast, hosted by some guy who happened to get booked on the Joe Rogan Experience during a slow week, you too can buy a McMansion in an affordable suburb.

Much of what happens in Bro Culture is driven by lifestyle consumption: ads for sunglasses on Barstool Sports’ Pardon My Take podcast, brand partnerships between supplement companies and YouTube stars, tactical holsters for concealed-carry that an ex-Marine with a million Instagram followers wants you to buy. It’s self-actualization through sponsor codes.

The tactical lifestyle craze, a natural outgrowth of this particular slice of Bro Culture, is the logical endpoint of all this. It’s where entrepreneurial late capitalism and influencer trends meet imperial wars, the militarization of the police, and the emergence of Gun Guys as a default protected class within American society. You’re not a Crossfitter anymore; you’re a “tactical athlete,” doing varied types of interval, cardio, and strength training so you can be a more effective soldier or cop or firefighter or whatever, or you just want to feel like you could be one. The physical training is only part of this, since you can prominently declare your tactical affiliations with a variety of lifestyle products, ranging from coffee mugs to American flag stickers for your car to, naturally, firearms....

Just as much as its coffee, whose quality I can’t speak to, Black Rifle Coffee Company is selling the tactical lifestyle. They offer a staggering variety of T-shirts, hoodies, hats, mugs, thermoses, and stickers, many of them prominently branded with the eponymous “black rifle” of the brand. There are a lot of American flags and pieces of law-enforcement and military iconography, signifiers of the in-groups to whom the consumers of BRCC’s products belong, want to belong, or for whom they want to signal their support. BRCC has explicitly labeled itself as a coffee company for conservatives, an active participant in the culture wars. If you don’t like Starbucks and its effete, refugee-supporting, liberal tendencies, buy some Black Rifle product instead. If you like Trump, you’ll be at home with BRCC. Don Jr. endorsed them.

After the picture of Rittenhouse in the Black Rifle Coffee Company shirt appeared, its founder Evan Hafer quickly disavowed the youthful shooter. Even for an explicitly MAGA coffee company, supporting a teenaged AR enthusiast with blood on his hands was a bridge too far. But Rittenhouse had already been shaped by the world BRCC and its fellow-travelers have made. He got the message, loud and clear: You too can become a hero, or at least dress and drink coffee like one, by purchasing the right products, watching the right videos, and following the same Extended Bro Culture influencers. Don’t forget to like and subscribe.

The Veteran-owned piece of BRCC’s appeal isn’t a coincidence. They’re selling a position in the culture wars, a sense of belonging, but also a particular vision of what it means to be American, a man, and an American man. A staggering number of this part of Bro Culture’s key figures are veterans. Jocko Willink, perhaps the best known (and least openly political) of the bunch, was a Navy SEAL officer; he was actually the commanding officer of the famous sniper Chris Kyle during the Battle of Ramadi in 2006.

After retiring, Willink turned his SEAL experience into a career as a leadership consultant, motivational speaker, media personality, and energy drink salesman. His intensity, built on his military service, is legendary: His exhortations to do hard things regularly, to live by a code, and take responsibility for oneself, resonate with millions of people. And Willink is far from the only one to do so, turning overseas service in imperial wars, especially as a special forces operator, into a key component of his entrepreneurial appeal. This isn’t a judgement on his military service; it’s a statement of fact. Being an undeniable badass is a the core part of why Jocko Willink is a quintessential Bro Hero.

Imperial wars overseas always come home eventually, and they do so in complex ways. The fact that millions of people listen to Jocko Willink, buy Black Rifle Coffee Company merchandise, and dabble in more extreme fringes is a product of decades spent elevating not just military service writ large but violent combat overseas against ill-defined Others. For every Jocko Willink, there’s an Eddie Gallagher, the SEAL who was convicted of and then recently pardoned for war crimes after becoming a cause célèbre for large swathes of the online right.

If these are the heroes Bro Culture puts forth - special operators accustomed to high-intensity, high-volume fighting overseas, who then develop enormous media platforms - it’s obvious what message Kyle Rittenhouse and the innumerable police officers, tactical fitness enthusiasts, and more run-of-the-mill viewers and listeners will take. Millions of people listen to Joe Rogan when he talks to Jocko Willink, Tim Kennedy (the Green Beret and MMA fighter and increasingly open right-wing figure), or Cameron Hanes (who advocated for Eddie Gallagher’s release). They’re warriors. Joe Rogan isn’t a soldier, but he’s a black belt in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a former competitive kickboxer, a bowhunter, and a firearms enthusiast. If these are the people at the core of Bro Culture, a culture that directly touches tens of millions of American men, then there are bound to be knock-on effects. If they’re constantly telling their listeners to be ready, to be tactical, to be prepared to fight and to be good at it, that means something.

This is why I think Bro Culture, or at least its extended reaches, deserve more scrutiny and attention. The code of American manhood that’s developing out of this social-media melting pot has some aspects that bear watching: A love of firearms centered on tactical usefulness (for use in what context, exactly?), a vision of muscular physicality, self-defense as a personal obligation, an unquestioning hero-worship of military culture, and far too often, a deep suspicion of people who don’t subscribe to this precise view of being a guy. Support the Troops, and if you don’t, you’re not really a man at all. If cops - quintessential subjects of Bro Culture - are told that they need to be bigger and stronger and quicker on the draw, that they’re basically Troops, and that the targets of violence deserve what they get, what’s the likely outcome of tense interactions between police and the people they’re supposed to serve?

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meta-squash · 3 years

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Brick Club 2.3.3 “Men Must Have Wine And Horses Water”

Cosette “broods like an old woman”; I’m not exactly sure what that would mean for Hugo’s time, but I assume she’s absolutely exhausted all the time and is forever preoccupied with the worry of what has to get done and with the things she’s suffered.

Cosette and Fantine are both “old women” at a young age, while Mme Thenardier is only a decade older than her real age.

Cosette has a black eye here, which means what Valjean sees when he enters the scene isn’t just a tiny, sad girl, but a tiny, sad, battered girl. No wonder he’s so protective of her. Through Cosette we see the conditions prisoner-Valjean endured: beatings, forced labor, exhaustion, ridicule, hate, spite, etc. We only got a quick summary of Valjean’s prison experience back in 1.2.6, and we don’t really get it at all in 2.2.3. But here we see it in the parallel of Cosette’s misery.

Hugo draws the Thenardiers so blatantly evil. Mme Thenardier isn’t just use Cosette when she’s convenient; she wants to send Cosette out into the dark to get water to torture her and make her scared, and she’s disappointed when there’s enough water.

Cosette lies to try and keep from going outside. This whole book, especially Myriel and Valjean himself, has this sort of undercurrent of “lying is cool, especially against authority figures.” This is also a lie of desperation, and I feel like it’s similar to Myriel’s lie to the gendarmes. Myriel lied to keep Valjean out of the darkness of prison; Cosette is lying to keep out of the darkness of outside and her fear. And here’s the thing: Valjean did step momentarily into the darkness when he stole Myriel’s silver, and Myriel rescued him from it. Cosette is going to be forced to step out into the darkness to fetch water, but Valjean is going to save her from it.

The whole interaction with the peddler is an example of how callous all the adults around Cosette are. No one is looking at this tiny little girl, who is clearly hurt and tired and scared, and feeling sorry for her having to slave away. No one cares about her misery.

FMA translates Thenardier’s taunt as “Little Miss Nameless” and Hapgood says “Mademoiselle Dog-lack-a-name.” The Hapgood one hits harder: Cosette already eats under the table with the dog, and now she doesn’t even have a name. There’s the bit in the musical during the Waltz Of Treachery where Thenardier calls Cosette “Colette” and she corrects him and it’s played as a comedic moment. But the reality is they probably call her insults more than her own name. Again this is about the musical, but when Valjean meets her in the show, she tells him “I’m called Cosette,” like she doesn’t have a connection with her name, but later on she tells Marius “I’m Cosette,” because she has escaped that life and identifies with herself.

Cosette carrying a bucket that’s almost bigger than her, is this another parallel to Valjean’s superhuman strength? She’s able to drag this massive bucket of water, though with difficulty, the way that Valjean is able to lift the cart. But unlike Valjean, her physical strength disappears when she leaves the Thenardiers. (If she hadn’t left, would she have become brutishly strong like Mme Thenardier?)

The Thenardier’s hatred and abuse of Cosette is integrated into their lives so completely. Mme Thenardier is just mumbling about stuff that has to get done and tossing insults at Cosette into the middle of her own little internal monologue.

I imagine Cosette isn’t actually hoping for a rescuer. She seems too cynical at this point; she knows no one will come help her, that’s why she lied to the peddler in the first place. It seems more to me like an abstract wish, the same way you might wish the floor to open up when something embarrassing happens. It’s not going to happen, but you wish it anyway. Except that we have Valjean as the Benevolent Stranger who is about to arrive.

Part of Valjean’s existence that I think is tied in with the concealment of his true identity is that he is literally always in the role of Benevolent Stranger. Could any of the citizens of M-sur-M profess to knowing him or knowing much about him? No, but he did the town a ton of good. And he will go on being the Benevolent Stranger, to Cosette, to the convent, to the poor as Fauchelevent, to the barricade, to Marius. This is something he succeeds in that Myriel does not: Myriel’s benevolence (and his ability to be so) is attached to his name. Valjean’s is not.

#les miserables #les miserables meta #brickclub #lm 2.3.3 #les mis #les mis meta

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argyrocratie · 3 years

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Religious and philosophical examination of the principle of authority

(Elie Reclus’ pastoral thesis accepted in 1851 before his immediate resignation. Tranlsated trought me from here )

...

“You, who want to be under the law, do you hear the law!”

- Gal. iv, 21.

INTRODUCTION

At all times of transformation, the question of authority and freedom is increasingly debated. Whenever a new idea wants to creep into humanity, those who are afraid stop it in the process, and say to it: Who gave you the right to live? - Non licet esse vos, said the official world to nascent Christianity.

Now, that a new religious movement is being prepared, this is what everyone has a presentiment of, some with joy, others with apprehension; but whether we love spring or hate it, the swallows are back.

- I wanted to do a job of removing muck

It is only a question of the religious question here: to leave it is to descend.

It’s not me speaking, it’s the Idea: I have accepted the starting point of Authority, to produce all of its consequences, to multiply itself by itself. Evil reveals its ugliness by showing itself in broad daylight.

Having to deal only with ideas, I wanted to be severe, because the struggle is serious, it is even deadly. For my part, I refuse any quarter that I would not give; between force and idea, I sided with freedom, and I said: Live free or die!

PART I, CHAPTER l

ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY AS A PRINCIPLE.

Sovereignty.

I. What is authority?

Etymologically, authority means the power of the creator over the created thing. Factor, actor, auctor, auctoritas. In practice, this word designates the government and its delegates. In religion and philosophy, it applies to any principle that calls for obedience.

This is what is meant by authority, but it is about getting into the idea itself, understanding its content and consequences. - I say that it is power, that is to say, necessity, in the forms of right and of fact.

II. By analysis, particular objects break down into elements common to many others. Thanks to certain laws, gases form oak, moss, or seaweed; what constitutes a flower, a trunk or a fruit could have become charcoal, diamond or freestone. The individual exists only through the action of some law.

If there is an absolute law, it is correlative to the very idea of Being.

III. The Being is not yet life. The stone exists, but it does not live. The laws of Being can be summed up in mathematical laws, but if they had no other existence than the abstract reality of four equal to two plus two, they would be nothing. What is justice without a righteous being? Being as substance will have to take form and life; it will act through individualization; through personality he will truly be a force, and will enter the world of facts and realities.

But the personality will never be anything but the expression of the laws of Being, from which it can no more be freed than nine of the laws of the ternary. Without individualization, the law would be an abstraction, but personality without a law, would be nothing at all. To be, yes or no, subject to its law, for each individuality, is to be, or not to be. Authority as law is summed up in the idea of Being, in that of the Supreme Being, who is God. Authority as a fact, in turn, is summed up in the primary personality, which is God. Authority is God, God is authority.

IV. Whoever unites with God becomes a participant of divine qualities, becomes a participant of impeccability and infallibility.

Communication with the Divinity carries with it the right of sovereignty. The respect due to the master is due to his representative, and to his ministers; now his ministers are the Prophet with the word of truth, the King with the sword of righteousness, and the priest with the bloody knife of atonement. The king, the pontiff and the prophet are in the midst of men the reflections of the divinity, as in the midst of pebbles, the diamond is the mirror of the sun.

V. The philosophical idea of the law brings us back to Being and to personality, that is, to God, the Law and the Lawgiver. But the religious man does not restrict himself to this detour; he accepts faith in the name of God, and God in the name of faith, he starts from obedience, and returns to obedience.

VI. All existence being only a living law, nature is only the system of laws, is only universal law. The law being the principle of cohesion and Being, outside of it there is nothing but nothing.

Who will tell all the laws of organic and inorganic matter, the laws of gases, liquids and solids, laws of light and heat, of electricity, of magnetism, of gravity, of expansion, and molecular unions? Where is the forgotten stone, where is the star in the heavens that is not the culmination and the starting point of countless laws? Show it, you who say: I am free!

VII. The law, that is, the authority, is absolute. As absolute, it is the cause, goal and means of all things. As absolute, it is everywhere and always identical to itself. So, the essence of authority being absolute, so too will the attributes; therefore all manifestations of authority are equally just and legitimate.

VIII. Being absolute, it is the unity of all contradictions. One does not have to do with this or that change, it ignores them. The stream, the cloud and the ice cube are always water. Yesterday it was this, today it is, and tomorrow it will be quite another thing, but it will still be the authority.

IX. Authority, being the absolute principle, confiscates all others for its own benefit. It is she who calls herself the source of justice, of truth, of good and of beauty.

X. Authority begins by denying any intelligence towards it. For strength without intelligence is pure strength. What can intelligence do against force? Force institutes order, even without intelligence, but intelligence deprived of authority what can it achieve? Something less than disorder,nothingness.

Intelligence is only a passive view; the sight of what is inside and outside of man; it is the more or less obscure perception of objective laws. Man has reason to be proud of his intelligence, as the drop of water to be proud, because the sun has penetrated it with one of its rays, as the night because a lamp has entered its darkness. All subjectivities can only exist through their union with the Objective, that is, through their dependence on the primary fact. So everyone's reason is only the more or less misleading mirror of primary intelligence.

Any intellectual notion in accordance with the immutable laws of Necessity is true, any notion in disagreement with them is false. Intelligence is the apperception of laws, intelligence itself is law like optics. The laws of intelligence are the laws of logic; the logical laws are the laws of equality, then of inferiority, or of superiority, those of addition and subtraction, also those of multiplication and division; they present themselves, it is true, under various combinations, and under great philosophical names; but they are nothing else than mathematical laws, generally qualified as material. Since intelligence is valuable only through its submission to authority, intelligence in itself is null.

XI. Authority again says: I am justice, and outside of me there is nothing but nothingness and injustice. For justice is only harmony with the law, and the law is only the expression of authority. The law is the will of the legislator, and the pure Will is outside justice, it is arbitrary. If God had wanted good to be bad, good would be bad, and evil would be good.

Authority does justice to the most violent injustice. When Jehovah ordered the massacre of the inhabitants of Canaan, he gave an order that it would be a crime to find bad.

The law cannot be debatable, the law can only be fair. The law is not law because of its justice; on the contrary, it is just, because it is the law.

XII. Authority being the negation of freedom, its presentation begins and ends with the negation of freedom.

This negation has much more logical force, now that the authority has just eliminated reason and justice; while freedom can only live on the life of love and understanding.

Authority is therefore supreme freedom to itself, and to others supreme necessity.

XIII. As much as the vulgar apologists for authority and those for freedom have agreed to confuse the two terms, so do we strive to maintain their distinction. If Bahal is God, serve him; if the Lord is God, love the Lord.

The relative has only a relative value. Now, the relative is precisely what needs law. Whether there are relative authorities, whether there are so many and more, from delegation to delegation man must be able to ascend to the ultimate sovereignty, from which no one can call and say: I brave you; before which all will bow down, as the grass bends in the wind. Under pain of suicide, the authority must crush all enemies; if authority is not binding, it will no longer be authority. Which means that authority has force for its essence, that is, necessity.

However, relative authority is not authority. Because as a relative, it can only engage man relatively, so it cannot constrain him, so it leaves man free.

We are a slave, or we are not.

Relative freedom is not freedom either. As soon as there is coercion, there is no more freedom. One is tied to a tree, were he only tied by a thin loose rope, if he were only tied by a very long rope, he is certainly not free. One with his hands tied behind his back, even if he can walk around the whole world, he is not free.

We are free, or we are not.

Authority, relative freedom, are only relative ideas. Both are only a swing between the two extremes and the two opposites, a compromise between Yes and No, an absurdity continues. Relative authority and freedom are the adulterous fruits of the union of Freedom and Necessity, of Being and of Non-Being.

The relative is a liar, there is only truth in the absolute.

CHAPTER II.

ABSOLUTE AUTHORITY AS FACT

Obedience

XIV. Sovereignty having placed itself above intelligence, justice and freedom, affirms that it is nothing but Force. What is strength in turn? It is not an idea, it is not a principle, it is necessity, it is inevitability, it is chance, it is a fact.

It will therefore be the absolute fact.

XV. If authority is absolute, it is because it has no other reason than itself; it is sovereign, to exercise sovereignty. Why wouldn't the tyrant flog the slave? Now, the God of the slave, can and must only be a despot. For if no tyrant would find themself before a slave that the slave would enslave themself not to the free man, but to another slave. The servile soul enslaves itself to everything, it is afraid of what is good, as well as of what is bad, it is afraid even of what does not exist.

Free the slave? It’s pointless and absurd, it’s cruel.

XVI. From God man derives his being and his personality. He was plunged into the abysses of nothingness, and God, in giving him existence, committed himself to nothing, but committed him to everything. May God send him torment upon torment, man will perhaps owe him gratitude, always submission.

Moreover, he still continues to be before God only the nothingness from which he emerged; his ground is nothing, and the form which this nothing has taken has been given to him by a will other than his own. What does he have left for personal value?

Now, what are, vis-à-vis Omnipotence, what are the rights of nothingness?

XVII. Not being the cause of his life, of his inner principle, he is even less the creator of outer things that can happen to him. If the germ does not come from him, all the developments of the germ will be things beyond his control. Which means that the supreme fact is that of Predestination.

XVIII. The reason for predestination? - But there isn't, and there shouldn't be. Predestination is the pure fact, isolated from any consideration of justice and morality.

If a child dies at birth, and by some accident, has not received the waters of baptism, it is predestined to doom. Cardinal Séfrondate, a modest and pious man, had hoped that these poor innocent people would not go to the place of torture, but Bossuet, the last father of the Church, overwhelmed him:

"Low and angry feeling, which destroys the strength of piety, strange novelty, detestable error, incredible language which strikes us with astonishment! "

“The damnation of infants who die without baptism is of steadfast faith in the Church. They are guilty, since they are born under the wrath of God and in the power of darkness. Children of anger by nature, objects of hatred and aversion, thrown into hell with the other damned, they remain there eternally under the horrible power of the Demon."

"So decided by the learned Denis Peteau, the eminent Henri Nolis, the eminent Bellarmine, the Council of Lyon, the Council of Florence, the Council of Trent. And such things are not decided by thin reasoning, but by the authority of the Scriptures!"

XIX. Whatever happens to you of joys and sorrows, O son of nothingness, comes to you by the express will of Him who, before children were born, loved Jacob and hated Esau. He created light and darkness, the fiber to suffer, and the heart to bleed; it is he who created the criminal and the torment, and the wicked for the day of wrath.

On feast evenings Christians and Christian women were brought into the emperor's gardens, tied to posts, smeared with pitch, and that pitch was set ablaze. And these men burned in the night, and died in excruciating pain, while Nero, accompanied by the imperial ladies, walked by the light of the horrible torches.

Nero had the right to do so; for he was absolute master.

And what you abominate in Nero, with your hand on your mouth, adore it in the strong and jealous God, who decreed the birth of Humanity, so that all of it, except "the little flock," may be destined for the sin and sorrow, and with infinite happiness, he looks upon his dreadful agony during the stream of eternities, and says: All is well, and I have done this for my glory.

XX. To say that authority is absolute as a fact and a principle is to say: de jure and de facto you are a slave.

But who to obey?

Since authority boils down to de facto necessity, one owes absolute submission to the Church or the religious community, in whose bosom one finds oneself by chance of birth.

Your Church will therefore impose some sort of dogma on you. Without discussion or murmur, you will accept them; with love, if she orders it; whether they are from the Thibetian catechism or from the La Rochelle Confession. It is of no importance that you understand them; you have to believe them; although absurd, because absurd, if you understand them, so much the better, but if you doubt, you are a criminal.

To the Church and its leaders, who impose dogmas, correspond the State and its leaders who impose laws. You will obey them.

Who is the legitimate authority in politics?

This question was urgently removed from the jurisdiction of individual reason. Legitimate authority is that under which one finds oneself, whether it be that of a usurper of yesterday, or that of a descendant of the usurper of centuries gone by.

All power is sent from God, if you disobey the power, you insult the representative of the Divine Majesty, that is why you will be punished. The de facto authority is the de jure authority. The authority is the one who holds the scepter which is a staff, the one who holds the sword, and says to you: It is the sword of God. This sword will hurt you, it may kill him too, but would you resist God?

XXI. As much as absolute authority as a principle has denied relative freedom, so authority as fact will deny freedom of examination, which for it is the rotten fruit of a poisoned tree. So if we do not ignore it, it is not to clarify the question, it is only to better formulate it.

In examining the principle of authority, absolute sovereignty has been asserted objectively and a priori. Infinity being the cause and purpose of the finite, submission is required in the name of infinite power.

In the examination of the fact of authority, absolute obedience is justified subjectively and a posteriori. Man not being his own cause, man being only an effect, submission is demanded in the name of his infinite weakness.

This justification, for being only a way to put iself out of the question, is no less terrible. It is the authority that turns around and condemns who wants to judge it. Indeed, if it is in the nature of freedom to forgive, authority need to justifi itself only by irony against whoever doubts, only by lashes and swords against who fight it.

XXII. Freedom of examination is a lie or obedience is a lie. Because if authority is authority only after being accepted by reason, it is reason that is the sovereign mistress. However, the spirit of each one is subjectivism, therefore dispute; intelligence by its nature is individual. What did I say ? The rights of individualism are the rights of intelligence, and before authority, the right of individualism is the right of revolt.

Individualism and authority are mortal enemies, they only fight to kill each other.

If the review confirms the value of the authority's orders, it is unnecessary; if it is against them, it is criminal. Why roll the dice, why risk the unnecessary against crime?

Who says freedom of examination, says absolute freedom. This man who maintains the autonomy of human reason vis-à-vis all revelations, would this man then abdicate his freedom to bow under a yoke? It would be absurd, it would be bitter madness.

Does he submit himself who submits only conditionally? If religious authority grants the right to scrutinize the Scriptures, it grants the right to reject them; if it is permissible to seek the rights of the pope, priest and pastor, the sincere man and the hypocrite will be able to claim that they are void.

Otherwise, the so-called freedom of examination is nothing but the freedom to find anything good; the executioner allows this to his victim.

Such were the consequences that Lamennais and J. de Maistre drew from the principle of the Reformation, and by denying them Protestantism lied to its principle and was cowardly of heart.

He therefore accuses the authority which wants it to be justified and which says to him: Wash away your iniquity. Whoever doubts today will attack tomorrow, for doubting is the first degree of disbelief, protest and hatred. The protest is revolt, and woe to the rebel!

The authority covers the idea and the ideologue of a sovereign contempt, it would gladly do like Nero, who, going for a walk in Greece, forbade the speaking of philosophy during his absence. Mystery and criticism are two contradictory ideas, and the very notion of mystery implies absurdity in the mind of whoever would like to judge it.

What is your right to judge, son of ignorance and desire, nothingness and greed? To be puffed up with pride and puffed up with vanity, which lives only by sucking the void, you would judge the laws immutable and eternal! Say, blasphemer, who assert that God is this, that God is that, say, who are you? where did you come from? say where you will go Do you only know what is your thought, what is your will?

Whoever has not searched what is in a drop of water, would he scrutinize the mysteries of the divine essence? The unfortunate one would dare to judge the one to whom he must obey?

Why do you command the ox, the horse and the donkey, and impose on them the labors of hard slavery? Because you are smarter than the animal, that is also why you slaughter it and eat its flesh. Now the law which is just against the beast is also lawful against you, whose understanding is without virtue, and is only exalted a degree above that of the brute.

XXIII. Now, even in logic, the idea of ignorance resolves itself into that of sin, for ignorance can only be caused by estrangement from God, that is to say evil.

Sin has terrible significance.

Don't we say that the progress we make in our knowledge of the world and of ourselves is progress in the science of evil?

Whether you were created as one, or have become one, you are a villain; now, from the wicked one must take away his freedom and his life, if one can. You crush the barely hatched viper, which never bit or hurt, just as you crush the one you meet on your way. And you who, defiled from head to toe, dare to show yourself to the rays of the sun, you were created poisonous scorpion, poisonous scorpion, you will be killed and tormented.

The fruit of sin is death, and to him who has deserved death, the hardest slavery is commutation of punishment and a gift of mercy. For all sin is a violation of eternal laws, and before eternal laws there is not too great a penalty for the least of peccadilloes.

Sin, then, is the moral foundation of the idea of authority. Who says original sin, says absolute authority and complete perversity of human nature, and says that gangrene has rotted the head and the heart.

CHAPITRE III.

Sanction of authority.

XXIV. When there is sin, authority is the punishment. If the crime calls for punishment, it is the authority that gives it. The great sanction of the law is retribution. The commanding word says: "Do this, or you will die." "The punishment, say the laws of Manon," the punishment governs the human race, the punishment keeps watch while all sleeps, the punishment is justice, the punishment is the most powerful of energies. "

Since man is evil and corrupt, can he do anything other than evil? The good is then that it is passive, entirely passive. Being absurd and wicked, he will obey by constraint; of intelligence he must have only to understand the order, of sensitivity, only to feel the lashes.

It doesn't matter to the authority whether you accept it or not; What does the resistance of the captive do to the heavy chain which seals him to the wall? Authority ignores your obedience, like your rebellion; but if you brave it, force will remain with the law, that is to say, you will be crushed and you will learn what is the reason of the saber and the logic of the grape shot.

XXV. Political and civil laws, as de facto authority, will have their de facto sanction. This is why the executioner closed the king's procession. This is why the state is calling for the prison and the guillotine.

In absolute authority, Church and State are brother and sister, and all religions give eternal condemnation as the last reason for their dogma. So much so that the believers, who tied Arnold de Brescia and Michel Servet to the stake and blew the flame there, said: If it is right for God to burn the heretic throughout all eternity, it is our duty to burn them already in timely manner. The last religious formula is this: Love God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind, or he will send you into the lake of fire and brimstone.

Summary.

XXVI. Man now knows what to expect. The earth is only one of the dark satellites of a dark star, an atom in the luminous dust raised around it by the ten-millionth of those blue, green or red suns, which seek some radiant constellation in the boundless fields of space.

Lost on this earth, which seems so great to him, lost like the infusor in the drop of dew trembling at the end of a straw, what is a man in the peoples of humanity, in the generations of past, present and future?

It is the drop tossed from one wave of the sea to the other, and which swirls between the whitening ridges; and the drop cries out: My life is agitated, it is stormy like the ocean; it speaks of revolutions and historical cycles, as it dies in the course of wave to wave, while it vanishes under the vault of an air bubble.

Your cries of joy and sorrows, O generations without number, are they anything other than the little sizzling sound of foam, of foamy foam that melts and goes away!

XXVII. With respect to authority, man is only one of the forms of nothingness, he has no right but to worship in the dust. His intelligence will never receive any other explanation than: I want it, and it is enough for you! If reason wants to protest against this absolute obedience, it is because the demon of pride is in it; it is that the man who thinks is a depraved animal. If your hand wants to disobey, cut it off and throw it dead and bleeding, as you would throw the slobbering head of a snake far away! Your submission should have no limits except that of your existence, miserable worm!

For it is not an exterior and passive submission that suffices, it is necessary interior and absolute.

The rights of human personality are not made for the slave, to whom the master owes nothing, not even his life. Whether the master chains him to the posts of his doors, so that he remains there from his youth until his very white old age, or that he has the body of the unfortunate thrown to the fish in his tank, the master is in his law.

The slave is one thing. He must annihilate his individuality in that of the master, he must “obey like the corpse,” submission is eternal suicide.

Slave of authority, do you understand?

XXVIII. It follows from the above: That authority is no principle of greatness, beauty, justice or intelligence.

That authority is a fact, and that this fact is that of overwhelming force, the fact of necessity.

Let absolute authority deny relative authority.

That authority denies in man all freedom, all reason and all conscience, and reduce his value to the value of nothingness.

SECOND PART.

RELATIVE AUTHORITY.

XXIX. Relative authority and relative freedom are just two sides of the same principle, that of the relative.

As much as the absolute is an enemy of the relative, so much is the antagonism between the two expressions of the same relative principle. So that relative authority fights relative freedom, and these two, leagued together, fight absolute authority and freedom. And yet relative authority has its source in absolute sovereignty, like relative freedom in absolute freedom.

XXX. Relative authority says that absolute sovereignty is impossible, by the very fact that it claims to be absolute. Man is not absolute, therefore nothing absolute can be imposed on him.

Moreover, absolute authority is absurd by the very fact that it places itself above, that is to say, beyond reason. Is absurd whichcommands absurdity.

Likewise, absolute authority is immoral in that it places itself outside the laws of justice and morality.

XXXI. Relative authority is now fighting the religion of absolute sovereignty, having attacked its morals and philosophy.

If the good and the just are such only by the will of God, if what is false and bad today could cease to be so tomorrow, the good would only have a value of arbitrary, arbitrary willed from all eternity perhaps, but always arbitrary. It is to deprive God of all moral value. This is to say that the divine personality is only a blind and fatalistic will, caprice raised to the height of the absolute, fantasy in the power of eternity.

What are the consequences ?

It is that chance and necessity, despite their apparent or real enmity, are only a duality reducible in the same principle, that of fatalism. Chance is the cause of fatality, necessity its effect.

So that the religion of chance and that of necessity are the same, so that the philosophy of the atheist and the religion of the God of predestination are correlative.

The philosophy of the atheist thus says: There is no God, there are only logical laws, and the harmony of universal laws. Everything is thus reduced to a mechanical-mathematical system of the attraction of similar and proportional, of opposites and homogeneous, everything is reduced to being nothing more than the product of the law of the vibrations of the strings, and of planetary gravitation. .

But why?

“… Necessity,” we are told.

For their part, the Muslim and the Calvinist blame the atheist for not leaving the idea of pure Being, yet the pure Being, the God of the Neoplatonists has only a much less real existence than that of hydrogen gas. As for them, they bring everything back to a primary personality.

Very good.

But this personality is only the hypostasis of predestination, which is only eternal arbitrariness, despite its name of immutable justice.

If in the first system all the affections, from the dog's attachment to his master, to the love of man and woman, have no more moral significance than the fact of a stone which falls under the laws of earthly attraction; in the second, all loves, including the love of God for man and of man for God, have no more moral value than the fact of pebbles placed next to each other by a idle child.

The atheist naturalist says: There is no God, there is only the impersonal existence of cosmic laws. The supernaturalist says: There is only reality the divine personality, apart from it, to imagine itself to be something, it is the drop of dew which believes itself to be the sun.

Materialism on the one hand, pantheism on the other, blind fatalism on both sides.

XXXII. After denying the principles of absolute authority, we will deny the consequences.

If man is evil itself, if he can only be an abomination, he is no more wicked than the rolling mill which by chance crushes a poor worker between its rolls.

If man is necessarily bad, evil is necessary, evil is only mechanical and material, that is, the very notion of moral evil is destroyed.

XXXIII. If absolute authority brings out the idea of sin and perversity, the relative authority and freedom bring out human weakness, and reduce the principle of human corruption to be nothing but that of the sin of ignoring. Relative authority and freedom therefore have intellectualism as their religion; this is what we see in these religions of compromise between the two opposing tendencies, such as Semipelagianism, Arminianism, Jansenism, Socinianism, and so on.

Indeed, the principle of relative freedom is summed up not in the principle of creation, but in that of a choice between two extremes.

Relative authority and freedom will therefore be summed up in philosophy. And what philosophy?

For example, that of Monsieur Cousin. -

XXXIV. But as soon as it comes to rebuilding the overturned edifice, then the union between relative authority and freedom disappears. One wants to take the most, the other wants to give as little as possible; and the struggle has no other logical end than that of a common death.

The relative authority will copy the absolute sovereignty, that is to say, it will reproduce the brass colonnades, the marble porticoes, and the granite walls, with slabs of clay and wicker trays. .

Instead of being based on the perversity of man, and his blindest unintellence, it will be based only on weakness and ignorance, and while one claims Omnipotence and that everything be nothing but nothingness around it, the other will have for strength only the weakness of what surrounds it.

XXXV. Relative authority as authority will feel the need to go back to its principle and will always end up believing itself to be pure authority and giving precedence to sovereignty over reason and justice, in other words: "order comes before freedom, obey first, then you will claim. "

By the sole fact of its exercise, relative authority becomes again theocratic despotism and divine right.

XXXVI. "Choose your government," says Freedom to Members of State and Church. "But stay loyal to it," adds relative authority.

This government, once established as best it can, wants, by the very logic of things, to realize the idea of government, that is to say to govern more and more. Relative freedom, in its turn, wants, no less logically, to be free more and more.

The struggle is therefore permanent; since there are governments and ruled, there has been religious heresy and civil revolt. Quite naturally, power will therefore compress more and more, just as freedom will react more and more. However, the compressive force on one side and the repulsive force on the other have the same goal: to break the existing union.

The old government will therefore be overthrown, another will be raised, and the struggle will never be more violent; for relative authority must reduce relative freedom, relative freedom must destroy relative authority.

XXXVII. If absolute authority is only a fact, with much more reason it is the same for relative authority which is only a compromise between two principles, which is therefore only their limitation, their mutual negation.

Relative authority is said to be the golden mean between absolute authority, which it calls despotism, and complete freedom which is only license to it.

The golden mean being the system of measurement, resent everything that goes too far to the right or too far to the left, because as soon as the two parties go to extremes, the union breaks up, the dualism of wills being irreducible. So, if a power understood its interests, it would only be the point common to all the parties (it is true that this power would only be one of the expressions of freedom), but always power is lost by ceasing to be the central point of opinions, becoming a party itself, an extreme.

The golden mean is the balancing of the forces; a matter of statics, it is the neutralization of all powers, which he minimizes; he protests against any energetic movement, for then how would he control it? he does not like life, because life cannot be weighed, nor measured. It tends to stand still, it tends towards death. Indeed, the golden mean concentrates the universe at a mathematical point, and that point is it. This mathematical point, having neither width, nor length, nor height, nor thickness, would be the infinity of littleness, if it were not the golden mean between what is and what is not; and how would he want movement, it who does not know what space is, how would it want Spirit, it who protests against infinity?

XXXVIII. As a fact, relative authority will translate into relative fact. It will be the chance of the moment that will become the necessity of the moment. These are the laws and dogmas of a day, the merit of which is to be provisional and temporary, and the wrong of believing themselves to be eternal. This is how civil property is that which has been owned for thirty years, without question; for under pain of an eternal war, there must be a statute of limitations for all usurpations.

On the other hand of religious authority which does not claim to be absolute, there are very few; for almost all of them give themselves an eternal value. But for a dogma to be absolute, the faith of the believer is not absolute; which is also a way of relativizing the absolute.

XXXIX. Telling the facts of civil and religious authorities, wouldn't it be a reminder of the shame and pains of humanity? We therefore refrain from doing so here, and stop only at the flow of ideas.

Authority being a fact, authority is necessary as long as the devotee, the serf and the subject believe that he who commands them is more than them, and that he is more than a man; it is then true, indisputable, for we need it, for necessity is the first of laws and the best of reasons; but the moment one no longer believes in authority, it is de facto and de jure annihilated; because if it can burn, it cannot convince.

As soon as relative authority, that is to say authority mixed with intelligence and liberty, has spend away its higher principle in favor of a people or an individual who has known how to assimilate them, it is then no more than pure authority; and it is precisely when it must perish that it proclaims itself eternal and absolute.

XL. Absolute sovereignty and relative authority agree that the measure of sin is that of their power.

Be it.

However, the authority being exercised by men, so much worth will be the subordinate, so much worth will be the master.

XLI. As far as the authority has been fair, as far it has developed the people towards morality, as far it will have done the work proposed by the tutor of Louis XV, who was working to render himself useless.

As far as it has been unjust, as far it will have developed the instincts of revolt and produced rebellion.

Thus the authority which is legitimized by the sole fact of its existence, is destroyed by the sole fact of its existence.

XLII. Who says relative authority, says authority which will end. For it can only have the practical value of time, accidents and circumstances, which vanishes as soon as we speak of God, conscience and eternity.

Relative authority is typified by paternal authority, which is also absolute at its origin. As long as the child is null as a force, he would be the victim of all external agents, if he did not have beside him a complementary being to be its strength and his intelligence. But as soon as the child is the smallest possible thing, it is only a question of relative authority, which in turn will decline in the face of the relative freedom of the child, from the day when the father has been somewhat wrong. ; finally, this authority will be nothing at all, when the son is morally up to his father.

Absolute sovereignty and relative authority correspond to the birth and childhood of man; however, it is in the very fact of childhood that it destroys itself by continuing; it is in the nature of authority to destroy itself by exercising.

This is the history of States, of Churches, it is the history of mankind.

Summary.

XLIII. Absolute sovereignty has proven by logical argument that it alone is true and that relative authority is absurd.

Relative authority has proven by the practical argument that only it is possible and that absolute authority is absurd.

Do we state an antinomy between fact and reason?

Yes, if there is no freedom.

Yes, if the freedom is not absolute.

- I believe in my infinite freedom.

CONCLUSIONS.

There are three religions, that of Force, that of Wisdom and that of Freedom.

The religion of intelligence is the religion of the golden mean, and like any intermediary, it has only a transitional value, and resolves itself into dualism; it is in fact only the perpetual antinomy of the ego and the non-ego, and the eternal attempt at union between the finite and infinite world.

Sixty centuries have slowly come to parade before the God of Strength, all peoples have come down through the ages to bow down to the dark Majesty.

The God of authority is the Sanzaï, it is the terrible Siwas and the heavy Djaggernaut, it is Zeus and Jupiter, it is the Manitou, it is the bloody Teutatés, it is the great fetish of the Kohi desert, and of the black inhabitant of Guinea.

This God they also called Jehovah, and of Christ with a heart burning with love, the wicked have made the minister of anger and vengeance. On Golgotha stands an immense cross, which rises above the rolling and noisy waves of human generations; and from the cross of the Saint and the Righteous they made a gallows, and to its two arms they tied the sons of Liberty, it is there that they die condemned in the name of God, and of the Man of Sorrows and infinite compassion.

Night covers the fields of the past, but if you look in the dark you will see the red flame of the pyres, and on these pyres they burned Vanini, they burned the noble Arnold and Savonarola, the heralds of freedom, they burned Jean Huss and Giordano Bruno, they burned the holy Joan of Arc. But will I say the names of the martyrs? Ask Torquemada, ask the Albigenses!

As for the people, they never recognized the man of God and cried out to him: Hail, O prophet! only when he saw her hanging bloody from the top of a cross. Who will speak of your sorrows, O martyrs of truth, you who have exercised righteousness! You have been stoned, you have been killed, you have been put to death by the edge of the sword, you have been grieved, tormented, you of whom the world was not worthy!

Oh ! when I look at the executioners dressed in purple reddened in the blood of martyrs, my heart trembles, and my flesh shivers. I shuddered with anguish and anger when I saw Faith, bloody Polyxena, dragging their hands behind their backs, before the altar of a black snake-headed fetish; they spread the dark veil of the criminal over her face, she lowered her head, then the priest cursed her, and the executioner plunged his knife into her chest.

Authority, bloody authority, I will not curse you, for I would make you hated by men weak of faith, and we must pray Forgive, O God, for they do not know what they are doing, to the executioner forgive, forgive because of the victim !

By accusing authority, I am accusing Humanity, and if I cursed it, I would curse my mother. For Humanity adores Necessity, peoples adore the Law of the sword with frightening fervor and immense cowardice.

All of them adore egoism, which imposes itself on other egoisms, and walks haphazardly across the world, all of them adore despotism, except a few men of desire and love who are lost here and there, near whom pass the people of the city who smile and say: Look at the poor dreamer!

You who cry out: Slave crouching in the mire, slave, with your head bowed between your knees, get up, get up, and be tall as a man! Poet, prophet, and you, preacher of truth, you are doing a work of greatness and nobility.

Help them, Lord!

Because they will be told: You are an ungodly and a blasphemer. They will be told: I excommunicate you, that is, if you take part in the meal of the saints and the blessed, I want the blood of Christ to become poison in your veins, and the flesh of Christ to become in you ferment of death

.Friends, in the name of the Idea, you advance against the sharp bayonet, and you advance against the whistling bullet, and you declare war on the Might, and you want to defeat the Force. So you will perish.

Let them cry out about madness, about immense madness! They will cry out about the madness of the faith and the absurdity of the miracle.

Go, noble prophet, go therefore and cry: That which is selfishness in the soul manifests itself in tyranny and bondage; what is love in the heart is revealed as Devotion and Freedom!

Our father in heavens, May your kingdom come!

THESE

Ubi spiritus domini, ibi libertas. 2 Cor. III, 17.

Ubi spiritus diaboli, ibi auctoritas.

II.

To argue with authority is madness. It accepts only one response: I am as strong as you, or this one, which is even better: I am stronger than you.

III.

It is said: Authority is the bond of beings, therefore it is unity; it is the first principle, it is therefore life.

Paralogism.

If authority is a link, it only recognizes the enmity of two pre-existing objects.

There is better than a chain to unite two beings, and all the freedoms there is attraction and love.

IV.

If the authority is legitimate by the sole fact of its existence, Freedom will find its justification in the sole fact of its existence.

If authority is only a question of fact, it will only have a matter value.

Now, if for the slave there is no Right against the Fact, for the free man there is no Fact against the Right.

Any power that wants to impose itself must be said to be of divine right; because man cannot have rights against man.

VI. If authority is the product of corruption, authority is corrupting.

VII.

Denying individuality, authority denies the immortality of the soul.

Without absolute freedom, the eternity of man is nonsense.

If man has infinite duration, he must have infinite value.

VIII.

I say that all Revelation, all Redemption was made against authority.

IX.

To be free is my right and my duty.

Protestantism has severed the vital root of Catholicism by depriving it of its principle of authority, papal infallibility.

If Protestantism in turn materializes in any authority, it will perish through authority.

Jesuitism and Calvinism represent the same principle of absolute authority; one stuck to the purely religious and metaphysical question, the other represented the authority of the Vice-God on earth, and stuck mostly to religion in its earthly dealings.

Jesuitism and Calvinism were born and died around the same time, today they are resurrected around the same time.

Representatives of the same principle, they have been the most violent enemies.

The authority of the last days had to be realized in the two most powerful extremes, the better to neutralize each other.

Because authority must perish.

XI.

If fatalism is a pagan idea, through Calvinism and Augustinism, paganism has entered the Church.

As far as it was in him, Calvinism destroyed the redemption of Christ.

XII.

One makes Christ an apostolic and Roman Catholic.

One makes him an "old Lutheran".

One makes a Calvin.

One makes him a rationalist.

Someone else does something else with it.

Certainly, Christ is the Christ.

XIII.

One make of Christianity this,

One make of it that.

One tastes of the nut only the very bitter husk.

One eats the fruit of it.

XIV.

God is the supreme objectivity only because he is the supreme subjectivity.

XV.

No one assimilates objectivity, except according to the power of his subjectivity. If I have no more self-awareness than the pebble in the road, I will not have the feeling of God any more than it has. My life is my love. -

XVI.

A higher truth would be fatal to a lower life. The fish that must breathe the little air in the water suffocates in atmospheric air.

Everything is mortal for the being who balances between life and nothingness, but for life everything is life-giving.

This applies to faith, to love, to all energies of the heart.

XVII.

It is said that two infinities cannot coexist without limiting themselves, that is to say without mutually destroying each other.

This is true for infinities which would be of the same nature. This would be true for the co-eternity of Good and Evil, the two sides of the same moral principle.

Is this true for infinities that are of a different nature?

I do not believe that.

I believe that infinite number of individuals would all have infinite value.

If the notion of individuality is identical to that of a being whose essence is absolutely sui generis, the notion of individuality is identical to that of infinity.

XVIII.

God is love.

Man is love.

End.

#someone can @ the christian anarchist for me #élie reclus #Christianity #christianism #anarchism #theology

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fatehbaz · 4 years

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Compilation of thoughts on apocalypse; dystopia; better futures; resurgence; contemplated during first week of pandemic quarantine.

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Johnnie Jae, with Rebecca Roanhorse, Elizabeth LaPensee, and Darcie Little Badger. “Decolonizing Science Fiction and Imagining Futures: An Indigenous Futures Roundtable.” Strange Horizons. January 2017.

We have survived an apocalypse and with every generation our future continues to grow more hopeful. As we continue to preserve and reclaim our identities, traditions, languages, lands, water, resources, and values in the face of every new threat, the future looks more and more beautiful. As for what that actually looks like, […] I would like to add that I imagine that those future generations are no longer living in survival mode the way that we are now. I like to imagine that we have done our job, that we have sacrificed and done everything in our power to keep the wheels of healing turning that our future generations are well. I like to imagine that they are living without the feeling of urgency that we feel in every decision and move we make, that they are thriving and moving forward with calm deliberation.

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Ursula K. Le Guin. No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters. 2017.

These are some thoughts about utopia and dystopia. The old, crude Good Places were compensatory visions of controlling what you couldn’t control and having what you didn’t have here and now – an orderly, peaceful heaven; a paradise of hours; pie in the sky. The way to them was clear, but drastic. You died. Ever since, utopia has been located not in the afterlife but just off the map, across the ocean, over the mountains, in the future, on another planet, a livable yet unattainable elsewhere. […] [L]ong-term survival [...] involves acceptance of impermanence and imperfection, a patience with uncertainty and the makeshift, a friendship with water, darkness, and the earth.

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Hugo Reinert. “The Haunting Cliffs: Some Notes on Silence.” Parallax. 2018.

On the neighbouring island group of Rost, for example, the nesting population of Atlantic Puffins has plunged from some 1.5 million pairs in 1979 to around 300,000 in 2017 [...]. What did the colonies here sound like, in their day? [...] The absence of birds becomes something spectral. [...] Mark Fisher analysed the uncanny affect of eeriness as the effect of a ‘crisis of presence’ […]. It could also arise from a failure of presence – in the experience of an unexplained nothing where there should be something: a ship at sea without its crew, say; an abandoned city, streets unexpectedly empty; a coastline without birds, perhaps, or a cliff-face full of abandoned nests. […]

The silence is real, the populations plunge and the colonies are collapsing – but its absoluteness was a trick of the light […]. I nearly convinced myself that this was the silence I had come for: an absolute silence, echoing with the absence of dead birds in the aftermath of some all-encompassing catastrophe; a simplified caricature, terminal and abstract. […] One trap among many – mistaking one silence for another, yielding to apocalyptic fantasy. The cataclysm may be unfolding but the silences that threaded this space were more complex, richer […]. They issued from a place that was reduced but not destroyed – impoverished, perhaps, but also still alive, neither lifeless nor (yet) fully devastated. They opened, in other words, on the myriad entangled possibilities of damage and survival, partial loss, recuperation, mutation, and resurgence; of life continuing but in other forms, under other circumstances.

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Melanie K. Yazzie. “Decolonizing Development in Dine Bikeyah: Resource Extraction, Anti-Capitalism, and Relational Futures.” Environment and Society. September 2018.

Indigenous feminist and Dine land defenders […] draw connections between the everyday lived material realities of environmental violence and larger structures of colonialism [and] capitalism […]. These connections are key for understanding the politics of life espoused by Big Mountain matriarchs like Whitesinger and Ruth Benally that emerged to contest these material realities of environmental violence and death […]. The land-based paradigm that emerged from the context of these women’s resistance to forced removal had, at its center […] both an unwavering critique of the almost totalizing death that extractive practices represented […] and a framework for Dine conceptions of life rooted in one’s relationships with the land and responsibilities to life-giving forces and beings like sheep, corn, family […] an entire web of relations that have specific connections to specific places.

In other words, through the act of resisting forced removal, these women enacted a politics of life that was both defensive (as in to defend life against the destruction of extraction) and generative (as in to caretake life through an ethos and practice of kinship obligation).

This dual move of defending and caretaking relational life is at the heart of the Dine concept of k’e, which is still widely practiced[…] Our decolonial aspirations are not just about sovereignty and exerting independence over energy development […]. Our politics of […] decolonization must thus not only act as a form of resistance to the death drive of capitalism and settler colonialism, but also function as a vehicle for imagining a politics of life that will refuse death and instead secure a future for all our relations.

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Kyle Whyte. “Indigenous science (fiction) for the Anthropocene: Ancestral dystopias and fantasies of climate change crises.” May 2018.

Danika Medak-Saltzman writes, in her analysis of Indigenous science fiction, gender and futurism, that “Indigenous futurist work can and does also explore a variety of dystopian possibilities, which [...] aid us in our efforts to imagine our way out of our present dystopic moment to call forth better futures” […]. Consider the work of Salma Monani in her analysis of Danis Goulet’s science fiction movie Wakening. […] Goulet sets this story in the dystopian times of the occupiers. In the film, the protagonists are women and nonhumans who have to figure out how to relate to each other again […]. Both protagonists occupy social identities that are disrespected or villainized in Canadian or U.S. settler colonialism, whether owing to gender, Indigeneity or being nonhuman. […] Of course, the solution to surviving the dystopia lies in the reciprocal responsibility of both protagonists to work together in ways that honor each other. [W]hat becomes apparent is the importance of reestablishing a relationship of reciprocal responsibility between the two protagonists, and emphasizing diverse gendered and nonhuman agencies […].

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buzzdixonwriter · 3 years

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ALPHAVILLE

Alphaville is a film you must watch.

Not “watch” in the conventional sense, where you passively sit and let sound and image wash over you, the type of slickly made / often entertaining mainstream factory pap that explains the plot points every fifteen minutes for anybody who went to the bathroom / checked their phone / nodded off in the interim.

“Watch” in the sense you must follow it close, actively paying attention to what unspools before you.

It is not a difficult film to follow, but you’ll be lost if you blink.

Alphaville the motion picture can be described several different ways.

One way -- the most common way, the easiest to reduce down to a simple logline -- is the producers of the Lemmy Caution movies (a European version of the Sam Spade / Philip Marlowe type of private eye character) threw caution to the wind and asked then La Nouvelle Vague wunderkind Jean-Luc Goddard to direct the next installment of the character’s adventures, resulting in a weird / off beat combination of film noir and sci-fi.

This would be like the Shaft franchise asking David Lynch to direct an entry.

Another way -- and in my view, far more accurate yet more difficult to explain -- is that Alphaville is a series of discussions on philosophy / theology / poetry covered with a dream-like patina of surreal tough guy antics.

Goddard, a film and pop culture maven since childhood, wisely mixes science fiction with stereotypical private eye tropes to bring these discussions to life.

The science fiction aspect is the first and foremost element, but the world of the private eye is needed to make Alphaville complete.

Science fiction enables Goddard to bring deep philosophical questions up to the surface by couching them in sci-fi terms that let them be treated as concrete concepts instead of abstract ideals.

Alphaville isn’t the first film to do that, not by a long shot, but the challenge in using sci-fi to discuss big ideas is that the spectacle of the genre may overpower the theme, the form triumphing over the content.

Metropolis, as superlative as it is, is a prime example of that.

Goddard’s stroke of genius lay in double filtering his message through the stereotypes and cliches of private eye fiction. Eddie Constantine’s Lemmy Caution is brutish and confrontational but uses that as a physical shield to protect a very human soul. This enables Goddard, through the character, to anchor the flighty intellectual aspects of the story in a grim and gritty reality that filmgoers could readily identify with.

Even at its most grim and gritty points, Alphaville continues to play with pop culture, tongue firmly in cheek in the manner in which it examines its questions, but like a prophetic parable carrying a far deeper and more profound meaning than apparent on first blush.

The plot is very pulpish, suitable for either Planet Stories or Black Mask Detective.

Caution, posing as a journalist for Figaro-Pravada but actually secret agent 003, arrives at Alphaville, the capital of a far distant planet (or galaxy; Goddard either not knowing or not caring about the difference and using the terms interchangeably throughout the film).

Alphaville appears identical to Paris of 1965, and indeed references in the dialog suggest the story is taking place in the very near future.

Ostensibly there to do a story on Alphaville, in reality he’s tracking down two men: Professor Vonbraun (Howard Vernon), an American scientist formerly known as Nosferatu who has gone to Alphaville and established himself as the de facto human face and hands of Alpha 60, the computer that runs the society; or failing that, locating Henri Dickson (Akim Tamiroff), a previous Earth secret agent sent after Vonbraun who apparently vanished.

Caution’s mission is to return Vonbraun / Nosferatu or kill him; his superiors are aware Vonbraun is guiding Alpha 60 to launch a massive war against the rest of the galaxy. (Why Alpha 60 thinks this war is a good idea comprises the true heart of the picture.)

Caution is met soon after his arrival by Natacha Vonbraun (Anna Karina), a computer programmer for Alpha 60 and the (apparently adopted) daughter of Professor Vonbraun. She unintentionally manages to arrange an encounter between Caution and Vonbraun, resulting in Caution being targeted for first interrogation then recruitment by Vonbraun and Alpha 60.

If you’ve never heard of Alphaville before this, you may be imagining this in grandiose Blade Runner style, but Goddard wanted his film grounded in reality so he shot using real locations, no special effects (other than the screen images turning negative in a few instances), and no elaborate props or costumes.

Alphaville literally is Paris of 1965, and the soulless laboratories and indoctrination centers and police stations are what was then mid-century modern architecture.

What makes Alphaville the society so alien is that Vonbraun through Alpha 60 turned the world into a completely logical / unemotional civilization. Goddard combines nods to Russian Communism, Orwell’s 1984, and French existentialism to shape the society of Alphaville, at first glance seemingly so like our world, but soon revealed in word and gesture to be radically different.

Gene Roddenberry got logical civilizations all wrong with the planet Vulcan. A logical civilization would not become a world of high minded aesthetics but rather of haunted, empty human souls using sensuality in lieu of spiritual values.

Despite its supposedly logical / non-individualistic nature, Alpha 60 acts to preserve itself. It relentlessly controls the population through language and censorship, hammering down any outbursts of individuality or spiritual leanings (spiritual here expanded to more than conventional religion).

This desire for self-preservation, fueled and guided by Vonbraun, manifests itself in its plans for galactic war aimed at subjugating all other planets so that they may never threaten Alpha 60 (the film leaves as a far question which came first, the egg of Alpha 60’s antagonistic plans, or the hen of the other planets sending agents like Caution to thwart them).

Goddard was no computers expert and he made Alphaville long before artificial intelligence research moved from the theoretical to the practical, but he nonetheless raises an interesting issue: Alpha 60’s oppressive nature is clearly hardwired into its cybernetics by Vonbraun, yet Alpha 60 displays enormous curiosity in the very human traits it strives to eliminate while Vonbraun feels so sure of himself as Alpha 60’s chief architect that he fails to realize his creation is truly thinking for itself, not following the guidance he programmed in.

Much of the philosophical inquiry in Alphaville centers on religion, but here Goddard doesn’t use “religion” in the conventional term of a set of dogmas and creeds too often followed blindly and slavishly by the uninquisitive and the superstitious, but in the difference between philosophy and theology.

Theology is best described as a sub-set of philosophy dedicated to things of the spirit (i.e., abstract, not necessarily supernatural). It reflects how we think and feel about unknowable and unprovable concepts.

Philosophy and ethics can be tested; we can see if the golden rule is a viable philosophy to follow, we can judge if one view of how the world works is more accurate than another.

As stated, the key difference is that philosophy never presumes to postulate a final answer, and when it offers an insight it never claims that insight represents absolute reality.

Plato’s Allegory of the Cave is philosophy because it reflects a view of reality never meant to be taken literally; far too often religious devotees insist their parables be taken literally and at face value, not any deeper, more meaningful one. Caution defeats Alpha 60 in the end by luring the computer into a trap of its own devising. Unable to grasp why humans value love and emotion and things of the spirit, it searches for meaning where it can find none because as advanced as it is, it cannot intuitively grasp their importance.

Alpha 60 realizes it is a little tin god, and in its futile attempt to elevate itself to the next level ends up destroying the very fabric of Alphaville’s social order.

Caution drives Natacha away from Alphaville to safety in the end, cautioning her like Lot’s wife not to look back. Natacha responds with a tentative expression of emotion: "Je vous aime" (and notice the use of the formal vous instead of the more intimate tu, she is starting to regain her humanity but a long road remains ahead of her).

In terms of execution, Alphaville is an extremely economical looking film (as well it should be since everything was shot on existing locations using the light weight cameras the French New Wave loved so dearly). The alienness comes across in the societal mannerisms, the elliptical dialog, and the odd juxtapositions found in the city.

Case in point: The phrase "I'm very well, thank you, you're welcome. Don’t mention it" is repeated frequently in the film.

At first it sounds like a typical social bromide, but as it is used again and again it takes on a more ominous, then sinister meaning.

It is not a polite thanks and dismissal but a warning, both to others and the speaker, not to entertain certain ideas.

Alpha 60 tries to control the citizens of Alphaville by controlling the language, banning certain words, changing the meanings of others. Characters refer to looking something up in the Bible more than once in the film, but only later is it revealed the Bible of Alphaville is a dictionary, and the salvation found within is the accepted language of the day.

The film maintains a dream-like quality throughout. Like most dreams, it certainly carries a strong, realistic feel yet at the same time is populated by surreal events and juxtapositions.

This dream-like quality plays well off the stereotypical private eye derring-do. Hard boiled shenanigans pop up almost randomly yet oddly not unexpectedly throughout the film viz Caution getting involved in a fist / gun fight with a hotel detective trying to spy on him as a “seductress third class” attempts to seduce him. It’s less than a minute of wild slam bang action and then it’s dismissed as if it never occurred, with Caution and the seductress continuing their cat and mouse game.

The film juxtaposes the opulent hotel lobby where Caution first checks in with the seedy rundown hotel lobby where he finds Dickson. The latter seems scarcely larger than Dickson’s seedy room, yet is crowded with its own staff (each engaged in some impossible to define task) and its own seductress third class waiting for clientele.

One of the most iconic scenes in Alphaville are the executions. Rebels against Alpha 60 (i.e., people who read =gasp!= poetry) walk out on a diving board over a swimming pool and are shot while making their last statement.

As they fall in the water a line of bathing beauties dive in, swim over, and drawing knives administer the coup de grace to the victim by repeatedly stabbing them underwater.

Which, incidentally, brings us to another point we need to acknowledge: How Goddard, Alphaville the film, and Alphaville the society treat women.

From our perspective almost 60 years later, we can look back at Alphaville and excuse its depiction of women by saying it was simply parodying the style of private eye movies of the era.

Which is true…but not enough.

Both French culture at that time and movies in general did not present what we’d consider an enlightened view of gender politics, and the females of Alphaville are all there for eye candy.

In some cases it works: The aforementioned synchronized bathing beauty executioners are so ludicrous as to be funny in a grim way, yet there are no other non-eye candy female characters to balance them out (there is a female cab driver, certainly unusual casting for a mid-1960s film, but she’s as gorgeous as all the other women).

And while one gets the idea behind each hotel employing professional seductresses (as an amenity in the world of Alphaville, as a commentary on the commodification of human relations in the film), today our reaction is more along the lines of “Is this really necessary?”

Far be it for me to tell Jean-Luc Goddard how to make movies, but it seems there could be half a dozen or more alternative ideas that would get the same point across without reducing women to this role.

Even Anna Karina’s Natacha gets subjugated to this mindset, serving mostly as a tour guide until the end of the film where she finally starts engaging more directly with the central conflict.

It’s not a comfortable look today, but we can live with it when viewed as a commentary on the style of the era. Compared with the Bond movies or almost any counter-culture film of the 1960s, it’s hardly the worst offender.

Here’s where I’m supposed to wrap things up and tell you to go watch the movie.

Okay, go watch the movie.

I’m not going to be hyperbolic and proclaim Alphaville a great movie because it’s a film set so far apart from the mainstream of cinema and the genres it mashed up that it’s not even an apples and oranges comparison but more like apples and the sound of autumn rain on the roof.

But seriously, you need to watch this movie.

#Alphaville #Jean-Luc Goddard #Lemmy Caution #science fiction #sci-fi #film noir #cinema #French New Wave #philosophy #theology #poetry #religion

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alysemeadfad · 4 years

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Portraiture

Group practical

we sat parallel to another person, we had our pencils stabbed through paper so we could not see the paper below and we had to focus only on the face and not look down, basically a blind drawing as far as looking at the drawing but we could see what the object was as we drew it.

i did the same thing again in graphite and had got a better understanding of proportion considering we could not see the drawing.

we then chose a unique image of ourselves, well mine was rather unique and we did a rough sketch to help us decide what we wanted to draw for our social realism drawing, i was quite impressed by my sketch the proportions were not half bad.

photo REALISM

i chose to just do the center of my face as i felt it would look the best in the social realism style, i then grid my drawing in 4 by 5 squares and did the same to my paper before then beginning my drawing of the outline and basic shapes in order for me to add tone and texture later on

what is photo realism?

photo realism is a form of art where a drawing or painting looks absolutely identical to the object or photo it has been drawn from, so much so you cant tell the difference between the two, it takes time, patients and a lot of skill.

but most of the art community don’t consider this to be an art form.

Many would argue that the technical skill required to make Photorealism art can be exceeded by a decent color photocopier or a computer, thus avoid to use the word art in such context, but this discussion brings us to an analogy of photography. If photography is merely capturing an image of what is already there, where is the art in that? It is right there in the photographer’s perspective, the exact choice made by the person wielding the camera in what to capture and from which angle, moment and perspective. If a person creating a photorealistic recreation of a photograph doesn’t have that “artistic” input of a photographer, then what is artistic about the process? Some would say even those renditions are not strict interpretations of photographs, instead, they incorporate additional, often subtle, pictorial elements to create the illusion of a reality which does not actually exist, or cannot be perceived by the human eye.

In the end, as in many things in art, and life in general, the final conclusion remains behind the individual perspective

Da Vinci

Long recognised as one of the great artists of the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci was also a pioneer in the understanding of human anatomy. Had his ground-breaking work been published, it would have transformed European knowledge of the subject.

https://www.rct.uk/collection/themes/exhibitions/leonardo-da-vinci/the-queens-gallery-palace-of-holyroodhouse/explore-the-exhibition#/

At the outset of Leonardo’s career, anatomical illustration was in its infancy. To convey the three-dimensional form of the body and to show how it moves, Leonardo had to develop a whole range of new illustrative techniques. His challenges were in many ways the same as those faced by anatomists today, and some of Leonardo’s drawings are remarkably similar in approach to modern medical imagery, such as MRI and CT scans and 3D computer modelling.

Studies of Human Proportion

While studying Vitruvius for his work on the Milan and Pavia cathedrals, Leonardo became captivated by the ancient Roman architect’s detailed studies of human proportions and measurements. In addition, when he was measuring horses for the Sforza monument, he became interested in how they related to human proportions. Comparative anatomy appealed to his instinct for finding patterns across different subjects. So in 1490 he began measuring and drawing the proportions of the human body.

The construction lines and all of the annotation almost take away from the actual subject and become more of the focus, which was the main idea anyway It was not meant to be a work of art, but rather a manual for how to create it.

Da vinci was a polymath, a person of wide knowledge or learning. He was not only an artist but a scientist, sculpture and an architect.

Frida Kahlo

was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country’s popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist.

Kahlo’s paintings often feature root imagery, with roots growing out of her body to tie her to the ground. This reflects in a positive sense the theme of personal growth; in a negative sense of being trapped in a particular place, time and situation; and in an ambiguous sense of how memories of the past influence the present for either good and/or ill.[110] In My Grandparents and I, Kahlo painted herself as a ten-year holding a ribbon that grows from an ancient tree that bears the portraits of her grandparents and other ancestors while her left foot is a tree trunk growing out of the ground, reflecting Kahlo’s view of humanity’s unity with the earth and her own sense of unity with Mexico.[111] In Kahlo’s paintings, trees serve as symbols of hope, of strength and of a continuity that transcends generations.[112] Additionally, hair features as a symbol of growth and of the feminine in Kahlo’s paintings and in Self Portrait with Cropped Hair, Kahlo painted herself wearing a man’s suit and shorn of her long hair, which she had just cut off.[113] Kahlo holds the scissors with one hand menacingly close to her genitals, which can be interpreted as a threat to Rivera – whose frequent unfaithfulness infuriated her – and/or a threat to harm her own body like she has attacked her own hair, a sign of the way that women often project their fury against others onto themselves.[114] Moreover, the picture reflects Kahlo’s frustration not only with Rivera, but also her unease with the patriarchal values of Mexico as the scissors symbolize a malevolent sense of masculinity that threatens to “cut up” women, both metaphorically and literally.[114] In Mexico, the traditional Spanish values of machismo were widely embraced, and as a woman, Kahlo was always uncomfortable with machismo.[114]

image taken at the MoMa in Nyc

Fulang-Chang and I depicts Kahlo with one of her pet monkeys, interpreted by many as surrogates for the children she and Diego Rivera were unable to conceive. The painting was included in the first major exhibition of her work, held at Julien Levy Gallery in New York in 1938. In the essay that accompanied the show, the Surrealist leader André Breton described Kahlo’s work as “a ribbon around a bomb” and hailed her as a self-created Surrealist painter. Although she appreciated his enthusiasm for her work, Kahlo did not agree with his assessment: “They thought I was a Surrealist but I wasn’t. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality.” Kahlo later gave this painting to her close friend Mary Sklar, attaching a mirror to it so that, if Sklar chose, the two friends could be together.

Tai Shan Schierenberg

Tai Shan Schierenberg lives and works in London. He graduated from the Slade School of Art in 1987 and in 1989 won first prize in the National Portrait Gallery’s John Player Portrait Award. He was then commissioned to paint Sir John Mortimer for the Gallery. The National Portrait Gallery also holds his portraits of Lord Carrington from 1994, Lord Sainsbury, 2002 and most recently Seamus Heaney from 2004. Other noted commissions include Professor Stephen Hawking, Sir John Madejski and a double portrait of Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh. For Schierenberg, there is an emotional charge that comes from the different textures and densities, and ultimately the light conditions, that occur in a place at a certain time. He describes his process in 2010: Painting and painting and painting, endlessly exploring ideas in paint on canvas, always painting my way. Finding that over time I can’t see the trees for the paint. Sometimes its good to try a new way, a different path, expose oneself to the vagaries of chance - and see the trees again.

Before he finishes a commission, Tai-Shan Schierenberg usually splatters a bit of paint in the corner of the portrait. It’s not a stylistic move – the brushstrokes in his paintings are fluid but the images themselves are representative – but rather one which gives the subject something to complain about.

in the image above you can clearly see the texture and markings on the canvas, the artist uses oil paint on canvas and applies it using a pallet knife and a large brush, making various large strokes in the work. this gives a rough texture and edge to the piece.

These instinctive visual images refuse to betray the plasticity of the medium. Unlike Freud, Schierenberg sees paint simultaneously as flesh. It is exactly this technique that establishes the major paradoxes characteristic of his work. It is both abstract and realist, edgy and sensitive, grand and inconclusive, violent and melancholic, physically intense and aesthetically detache

Lucian Freud

was influenced by surrealism, but by the early 1950s his often stark and alienated paintings tended towards realism. Freud was an intensely private and guarded man, and his paintings, completed over a 60-year career, are mostly of friends and family. They are generally somber and thickly impastoed, often set in unsettling interiors and city scapes. The works are noted for their psychological penetration and often discomforting examination of the relationship between artist and model. Freud worked from life studies, and was known for asking for extended and punishing sittings from his models.

one of my chosen artists, tai shan sheirenberg seems to be heavily influenced by the style of lucian freud yet he made his own style, they both use the same meduims, oil on canvas also.

here in the colder tones we have a painting by lucian freud, you can see the texture of the brush strikes that help carve out the facial features.

here is a painting by tai shan, the tones are a lot warmer, they are not of the same person tho they look similar, you can see the brush strokes again on this image that help carve out the facial features, tho they are a lot more prominent in this painting as thats tai shans style, you see paint before you see the face .

Interpreting line

The Visual Element of Line is the foundation of all drawing. It is the first and most versatile of the visual elements. Line in an artwork can be used in many different ways. It can be used to suggest shape, pattern, form, structure, growth, depth, distance, rhythm, movement and a range of emotions.

We have a psychological response to different types of lines:

Curved lines suggest comfort and ease

Horizontal lines suggest distance and calm

Vertical lines suggest height and strength

Jagged lines suggest turmoil and anxiety

The way we draw a line can convey different expressive qualities:

Freehand lines can express the personal energy and mood of the artist

Mechanical lines can express a rigid control

Continuous lines can lead the eye in certain directions

Broken lines can express the ephemeral or the insubstantial

Thick lines can express strength

Thin lines can express delicacy

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lettucetacoboatsix · 4 years

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Like hurt me, but make me feel safe: Non-Consent Fantasies and Shame

Anonymous asked:

Fear: my sexual fantasies. I get aroused by rape fantasies and thoughts about my physical pain. It makes me feel like a slut and I hate it.

Content warning: Those who find discussions of rape and sexual assault may find this article triggering.

Hello friend,

That sort of fear has the potential to shake you to your core. Our sexuality and sexual identity is something so intrinsically tied to the self and to privacy that when it shows us something that we fear, we begin to question our very being. It’s easy to get lost in that initial reaction of self-loathing and disgust. We can’t always control which dark corners our minds will wander to, just like we can’t always control our physical arousal response to stimuli. Those responses do not make us gross or slutty or evil. Really, all they show is that we are human and that we are alive. Especially if you are still able to tell the difference between fantasy and reality.

Sexual fantasies run the gamut because personalities and interests do. They range from outlandishly unrealistic to entirely plausible. Maybe you fantasize about a trans witch, her anthropomorphic dinosaur lover and a sentient motorcycle with a human head (yes, that’s a real thing. Seriously, the rabbit hole of self-published erotica available on the internet is a glorious exploration of the human condition). That’s totally okay! It’s probably never going to happen, but role playing can be a lot of fun.

The fantasies that you mentioned, though, are often more realistic and play on our sense of safety and control. I do want to caution how we talk about them, though. While easily recognized as a “rape” fantasy, a more accurate term would be a non-consent fantasy or a forced sex fantasy. Rape is, by definition, sexual violence—a violation of the body and mind. Your sexual fantasies, while they might include elements of saying “no” or being bound or even physical harm to your body, are your fantasies, and are therefore empowering to your sexual identity. Sexual fantasies let you explore your sexuality. They are what allow us to find self-gratification on those cold and lonely winter nights without WiFi. We get to recall our fantasies through roleplay scenarios to make our sex lives even more fulfilling. This type of fantasy plays off of our feelings of sexual shame (if we’re saying we don’t want it, it’s not our fault when it happens and we enjoy it), and, because of that, we generally do not talk about it candidly. Rather than releasing ourselves from that shame, we internalize and we are disgusted by our own thoughts.

But this type of fantasy is incredibly common. A 2017 study (and seriously… PubMed is an amazing database of references and abstracts on life sciences and biomedical topics) showed that between 31% and 57% of women have fantasies in which they are forced into sex against their will. For 9% to 17% of those women, non-consent fantasies are their go to deposit in the spank bank. Another study, showed that 62% of women had had a non-consent fantasy at some point, and 14% reported that they had such a fantasy at least once a week. The cultural narrative would tell us that men fantasize more about domination than submission, and, while research does anecdotally support this, socialization isn’t absolute, and a person of any gender can embrace that desire to let go—to be seduced against our will or to be forced to have sex. It is a completely normal fantasy to explore.

It is understandable if those statistics make you uneasy. In real-life contexts, non-consent is deeply traumatizing. It is not at all sexy to feel that we have no sense of agency or safety in our daily lives. It is an intense violation that causes high levels of mental anguish and anxiety. It seems like there is some serious cognitive dissonance that we would use violent sex and non-consent as the basis for our sexual fantasies – but so many of us do.

It’s absolutely vital to note that while non-consent fantasies are common, this does not mean that anyone secretly wants to be raped. There is a huge difference between acted out role-play, imagined scenarios, pre-negotiated scenes and real-life experiences. No one asks to be raped, no one deserves to be raped, and how common forced sex fantasies are in no way justifies unwanted sexual contact of any nature. It is impossible to know exactly what these fantasies entail, because, they are going on in someone else’s mind. If you do choose to engage in a scene of consensual non-consent, pre-negotiation is absolutely mandatory and a safe-word must always be respected. Acting on these fantasies in real life requires an intrinsic trust with one’s partner and a thorough discussion before anything actually happens.

For some, fantasies of forced sex steered away from experiences that would be close to reality. Rather than lines of consent being crossed by friends or bosses, we fantasize about high drama situations in which we are forced to have sex to survive, entering into sexual contracts rather than having our right to consent taken away from us outright. We might share the relatively common fantasy of being kidnapped and held hostage, then having one of the guards forcing us into sex to survive, or we might fantasize about thieves breaking into our house and being so overwhelmed by our presence and attractiveness that they have to have sex with us against our will. In both of these relatively common scenarios, we start out by resisting the advances. Then we begin to enjoy the sex midway through, as pain and terror give way to pleasure. It is this relinquishing of control and giving in to desire that is the turn on, rather than the very real trauma of real-life sexual violence.

For others, though, these fantasies are more true to life. It may not be about feigned struggle, but imagining consent and control being ripped away as a major turn on. Why are so many of us aroused by forced sex when we’d be horrified of it in reality? Why do we find the idea of rejecting sex then being made to do it anyway a turn on? There are a few theories.

One theory is that it is an echo of the dominant narratives shown in our media-saturated world and masculine-controlled pornography. Our culture sells sex, and that vision of sex is a masculine man being dominant and losing control around a meek, diminutive and submissive woman or multiple women or parts of women or women acting as furniture or other objects. Our fantasies of non-consent are just an extension of that narrative—an internalized misogyny. Personally, I get that this might provide the framework, but it really seems like more is going on in those fantasies.

Another theory is that fantasies of non-consensual sex can be boiled down to lingering guilt and shame around sexuality. Young people are taught to hide sexual feelings or encouraged to fit narrow gender stereotypes of the acceptable ways that sexuality can be expressed in society. This leads to feelings of deep-rooted guilt and shame in expressing one’s own sexual desire. Being forced in the fantasy allows freedom since what happens to us and what we enjoy are not our fault with that added level of narrative. It’s not us, it is a fantasy version of us that doesn’t have a choice. We can’t be ashamed if we don’t have a choice.

If it seems like I am belaboring this point, please recognize how important it is to be clear here. Just as having fantasies about being abducted by an insectoid alien queen and being penetrated by her ovipositor to become an incubator for the next generation of our future overlords doesn’t mean you want to quit your job and become an astronaut, fantasizing about non-consensual sex does not in any way mean that you want to experience sexual violence in real life. It does not make you less human. It does not make you a slut. All it does it make you aware of this particular branch of your sexual fantasies. One more time for the folks in the back: people who have fantasies of experiencing sexual violence do not want to experience real-life rape. Fantasies are not permission to do such a thing, and what people find erotic in their minds can be deeply distressing when played out in reality. Having fantasies about being raped also doesn’t make you a terrible feminist. It doesn’t mean anything about who you are as a person, other than that you’re a person, who occasionally fantasizes about non-consent.

You are also no more likely to experience non-consent fantasies if you are a survivor of sexual assault or rape – fantasies can come up for anyone, at any time in their lives – and, if you are a survivor of sexual violence, it is incredibly important to note that experiencing non-consent fantasies does not mean that their real-life experience was in any way less traumatic. While renegotiating a scene on your terms might be a very therapeutic way to process and heal from a traumatic event (whether through role reversal or putting yourself in a submissive role by choice), having a fantasy at a later date is not indicative that what happened to you was somehow less traumatic. It’s important to understand your own feelings around fantasies of forced sex. If you’re enjoying them and are free of any guilt or discomfort, you don’t need to worry – fantasies of being forced to have sex are entirely normal and very common. If these thoughts feel intrusive, out of control, or distressing, though, then they’re no longer fun sexual fantasies – they’re an issue which needs resolving. Echoes of shame and guilt can often be addressed through open communication and understanding. But with that being said, though, if in the moment of fantasizing these fantasies are causing you distress, please seek professional help in the form of an understanding therapist. Fantasy is a tool for exploration. It is nothing to be ashamed of. If you’ve established that your fantasies are just that – sexual fantasies well within your control, that you find arousing, not distressing – you should feel free to enjoy them.

It’s entirely normal to find something arousing when it is played out in the safety of your mind but upsetting in real life. It’s normal for your own mind to push the boundaries of your comfort zone, and it’s normal if being out of that comfort zone makes you uncomfortable. Don’t panic, and bring a towel. Don’t judge, and treat your mind as a safe space to explore your sexuality in whatever way tickles your fancy at a given moment. If you do want to role play, have that discussion with your partner(s) as openly and honestly as possible. A mind is a terrible thing to waste. Especially a sexy, sexy mind. So treat yourself. Let go, and enjoy.

With love, friend.

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amserblog · 5 years

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Them vs Gender

The Them grow up into humanity and into themselves. As fate would have it, Pepper, Wensleydale, and Adam are all a different bit of queer. And Brian. Brian is just Brian. Always supportive, capital A, Ally. Hard not to be when your three best friends are or have been every letter in the LGBTQ+ acronym and then some.

Pepper is the first of the Them to start dating proper. Her girlfriend is shy and sweet, a little aloof but, next to their tight knit group, most people come off that way. Pepper doesn’t announce anything, and no one is surprised, really, content in their assumptions. There are, however, some confused blinks when several years and several girlfriends later she does clarify that she’s bi, actually, but she refuses to go into further detail regarding past and present crushes aside from the fact that there were Some.

Adam comes out as genderfluid quite suddenly when they’re seventeen. It turns out, actually, that when you’re eleven and you suddenly have a weird sort of awareness of something resembling cosmic truths and your supposed place in the universe it’s pretty difficult to reconcile that with such nonsense as rigidly defined, immutable gender. All the same, Adam tucked that feeling away to deal with later, because there were more pressing matters at hand and then they promptly forgot about it for three years because there were still plenty of other things to do like being a Teenager, which was a brand new experience of its own. On most days they still maintain their usual boyish masc aesthetic, but they don’t see why they can’t just be a girl or a not girl or a not boy or all of the above at once some days if and when they want to. More fun that way. Adam’s never been one to let other people’s Ideas (particularly Grown-Ups so set in their ways) get in the way of their fun.

Wensleydale grows from a boy to a teenage boy absolutely as one would expect of him. He’s quite a bit closer to being an accountant than when he was eleven, and that’s probably the most notable development of the past nine years. Every few years, Wensleydale would try to switch to actually using his first name (Not Jeremy, as it turns out) but the name in question was something different and new with every attempt and as such he remained Wensleydale for simplicity’s sake (or just Wensley to friends). During some lazy reminiscing, the Them get around to asking what was the deal with that Jeremy rumor anyway, and it turns out that’s just the first name a six-and-a-half year old Wensley had blurted out one day when prompted, having quietly decided that his old name was rubbish, at which point the puzzled teacher spoke to his parents and his parents looked at each other and looked at their kid and soon the Wensleydales were all out on an adventure together navigating the joys and the trials of growing up transgender. Young Wensley never could settle on a name, and liked being Wensleydale fine enough (a daily reminder of his Family, who Loved him, though he wouldn’t realize this was why the name gave him such warm joy until later [1] ) and so it stuck and was firmly stuck by the time the Them were an established gang of mischief makers. Wensleydale and family were the private sort, and there just wasn’t much of an occasion to go announcing the exact details of the arrangement unprompted.

By 26, Adam has settled into a routine of picking his gender out for a given day with the same casual air of picking a pair of shoes (and has gone back to he/him pronouns in the end after several years of trying other pronouns on). Wensleydale always wears at least one transgender flag at all times, having gotten acquainted with the sin of Pride after realizing that he’d been in like company all along and in fact it was only more validating to experience the whole mess together. Pepper has separately dated each of the Them at some time or another and now all four are in an easy, relaxed, and mostly unspecified sort of Arrangement all their own devising. Pepper and Adam keep swapping clothes well into their teens until they can no longer fit so conveniently into the same sizes, and then they swap accessories instead. And Brian. Brian is just Brian. Always supportive, capital A, Ally. Hard not to be when your three best friends are or have been every letter in the LGBTQ+ acronym and then some. And maybe Brian is Gay, or Bi, but by the time that’s relevant it seems like an awfully small contribution to the collective queerness of the group. [2]

Brian had watched Adam, of course. And had been Supportive, of course, true to habit. Given that their two other friends had already had a go at deciding their own names, and Adam liked the idea of picking things for himself, he and Brian had spent some time brainstorming hypotheticals like “Ada” and “Breanna”, shallow mirror images of their given names that got increasingly outlandish as the night went on, and they devolved into giggles before concluding that Adam could only have ever been Adam and nothing else. Adam’s existence is not a question, but an answer, a loud proclamation against the universe.

Brian, on the other hand, finds no answers. Brian, over years and years sinks slow but steady into an endless cycle of Questioning. Brian tried on a dress and a different name and despite the momentary fun encounters a dull “sure?” of an emotional response, and Brian soon enough found that the idea of Brian the Boy elicited an identical, resounding mental shrug. Adam the Boy and Adam the Girl were equally tangible, believable concepts but Brian the Boy felt like trying to wear his father’s shoes and Brian the Girl was a thing of playacting at best. Brian knew Pepper, and knew what being a Girl was, even if Pepper was actively unconventional as far as Girls go. Adam always said that gender was nonsense but Brian wasn’t sure Adam had meant nonsense in the way of wanting to abandon the concept in its entirety.

Bits and pieces cherrypicked out of this and that gender seemed to fit but not quite pieces out of the same puzzle set. The whole mess became an altogether unnecessary bit of mental exercise that wore down on the soul in a way that defied words and boxes. After a frank discussion, the Them offered up a range of words to help Brian out--nonbinary for starters, genderless (maybe), androgyne (not really), agender--sure? How does one describe absence of a thing, not even a thing, but a perceived abstract feeling several rounds removed from realms of physical reality.

Ineffable, perhaps

[1] Tangentially, Wensleydale is happily adopted. He didn’t know his birth parents very well but he did know them, was adopted age 4 and started out very suspicious about the whole adoption thing. As such, the Wensleydale parents are aggressively inclusive of him in all family activities.

[2] I would at this point like to make it clear that queerness is not a contest and Brian’s concern is unfounded. If Brian were to come out as bi, his friends would 100% celebrate and support it as they would any coming out.

#good omens #amserpand writes #writing #queer headcanons #sort of a fic?#sort of not?#the them #open invitation to take these ideas and run with em as long as i get to see #i started with brian and it snowballed from there #the author is queer and nb #genderfluid adam #trans male wensleydale #bi pepper #agender brian #the they/them in other words

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taffystake · 5 years

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This Week in Taffy Comics (AKA I Have A Busy Week But Still Wanna Talk About The Comics I Read)

As the title says, its time to write another batch of quick reviews for each comic.

Amazing Spider-Man #27: Picking up from last issue, we get to see the all-female Syndicate on their first opting: capturing Boomerang to torture him to death for how much he has screwed all of them over in the past/been generally scummy. And Boomerang is hanging out at the FEAST center to help Peter and May when they show up. So we get to see as an extremely well-coordinated Syndicate just brutalizes the extremely less-capable Spider-Man and Boomerang duo before taking Boomerang back to their base, where we see Beetle is planning to sell Boomerang back to Kingpin rather than the offers to let the others dictate what happens she told the rest of the Syndicate. And also, when Spidey goes to get his gear to track down Boomerang, he finds out that Randy Robertson, his roommate, is dating Beetle. So yeah, tons of fun little intriguing bits at work here. The art from Kev Walker is a ton of fun, if a little weak in some of the facial expression work. And this comic is still showing the small tie-ins to the villain Kindred from issue 25, with how Beetle (as an employee of Kingpin) won’t harm Spider-Man due to Kingpin’s deal with the centipede villain.

Absolute Carnage Separation Anxiety #1: Well, its time to see how the LIfe Foundation symbiotes that formed into Hybrid are managing out in the world. And how they are....is basically as a stray dog who comes across a young girl doing her best to avoid going inside to her about-to-be-broken family. So, in its Knull-crazed state, Hybrid decides to help out by ‘fixing’ the family and letting each family member get a symbiote. And so we get to watch as a young girl and boy essentially deal with the monster from The Thing, and all of the horror that entails. The art really helps to sell it, with everything looking nice and normal up until the moment Hybrid emerges, which is when the art just takes off with very tense paneling and crazy new models for the symbiotes. Its honestly a ton of fun and I recommend it as a read.

Silver Surfer Black #3: After getting smacked by Knull, Silver Surfer is now hanging out with a very young version of Ego and is trying to get the living planet to help him fight Knull. Except Ego has a massive pain and Silver Surfer offers to take care of it in order to let Ego help him and hopefully get Silver Surfer back to a place and time where he won’t be slowly dying due to using his powers. So he dives in, gets past the organic defenses that this living planet has and reaches Ego’s core. A core that is currently occupied by Lifebringer One, the cosmic incubator of Galactus. Still a lot of fun, definitely interesting to see Silver Surfer on the back foot for this comic run and can’t wait to see where we go from here. The art is definitely a lot more psychadelic and abstract than some people might enjoy but I find it a great time.

Ironheart #9: Riri is in Wakanda to find the Wellspring of Power that the Ten Rings is after and her only help is Shuri. Unfortunately, Shuri and Riri initially mix like oil and fire, at least until a lot of heroic action against shadow monsters that are likely a result of this wellspring occurs, letting Riri and Shuri establish something resembling a rapport. Luciano Vecchio is an amazing artist and really sells a lot of the characters and actions extremely well, the fact that Riri and Shuri drive each other nuts due to their similarities rather than just automatically clicking as a team because they both do hero things is fun and gives the whole story its own little arc instead of simply being all about the Ten Rings stuff. I am having a lot of fun with this series and hope the rest of y’all are as well.

Powers of X #2: Four stories that once again begin showing small details. In this case, it shows how Professor X and Magneto united due to Moira’s interactions with them, a reveal to the House of X crew about the Mother Mold that is orbiting the sun and preparing to launch Master Mold Sentinels towards the Earth, the crew with Rasputin and Cardinal showing their leader to be Apocalypse and preparing for what seems like a suicide mission to get information, and finally the robot world preparing itself for integration with a massive robotic collective from space. All are a lot of fun, but the small hints of information and the fact that this could be read separately from House of X and still get a great story (if requiring House of X #1 to understand things).

Gwenpool Strikes Back #1: Gwenpool is desperately avoiding being retconned or removed from the Marvel Universe. So she will get herself powers from the radioactive bits of Spider-Man. How you ask? By robbing a bank and waiting for Spider-Man to show up to ask. Cause damnit, Gwenpool wants to remain relevant as a character. So she threatens Peter with revealing his identity, falls into the gutter space between panels and ends up seeing she is about to be retconned. So instead she decides to abuse a bit of reality-warping to become even more relevant....and also be irradiated as hell.

So yeah, fun week this week. Nothing will top Absolute Carnage for me for a long while but dang if this wasnt as least a fun attempt.

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sunshineandfangs · 5 years

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Klarosummer - Quote || قلم قدرتمندتر است

Quote: “Newsflash - seashell bras give me hives.”

@klarosummerbingo

This one gets a bit meta. Also yes, I am going to make you all suffer through the Persian alphabet because when I tried to get a phonetic translation I failed and just butchered the language.

---

Caroline nibbled on the tip of her pen, struggling to find the words she wanted to say. She didn’t often use pen and paper, only when she was suffering a particularly strong block. Something about the motion, the way dark ink looked on clean paper was soothing and satisfying. Usually, by now something would have come to her, but today? Nothing.

She groaned, tossing the notebook down beside her as she leaned backward against the seat of the bench. It wasn’t comfortable. The hard wood digging into her spine and shoulder blades, blood rushing to her head as she let it hang.

Grumbling some more to herself, she eventually threw herself up and out of the bench, taking back her notebook as she marched through the park. Nature was good inspiration, or so she’s been told.

---

Shoving through the front door, Caroline set her keys down with a clank in their designated dish. All she managed to accomplish was getting a semi-decent workout, her pace increasing from a walk to a mild jog the more frustrated she got. That, and amusing herself by drawing a very fancy calligraphic “t” for the word “the.” SpongeBob was a classic.

Trudging toward her room, she threw herself across her duvet, glowering up at the ceiling as if it had all the answers to her problems. And she glared long enough for her eyes to start to feel strained, solving exactly zero of her problems. Tiredly, she rubbed her palms against them, figuring it was time for a break.

It was just so frustrating. She had all these worlds circling around in her mind. Sometimes she could picture them so vividly it felt like she could step through and taste them. There were characters who seemed to beat against the inside of her skull, their voices and thoughts and feelings so strong.

But the link between her imaginings and reality just didn’t click all the time. She would go to write something, but it just wasn’t quite right. Cross it out, backspace, start again. Stare blankly at a blinking cursing feeling a scene in her mind and having it escape her as soon as she went to type.

Caroline bit her lip.

Well, that wasn’t quite the whole truth.

Closing her eyes, she let herself fall. Down, down, down the rabbit hole of her mind, sinking into the core of her being. She reached out, grasping the strongest pulse she could sense.

Caroline gasped, eyes shooting open as she lunged for her laptop.

“Newsflash - seashell bras give me hives.” Poured out onto the page, a vivid image of young woman danced around in her mind. Red hair, slight waves, green eyes, a smattering of freckles. Her name was Candice, she knew, a bit of a spitfire and sassy, but also kind.

Her friend was Nina. A brunette, her hair curlier and longer, and her personality a bit more abrasive. But they were steadfast friends. Their relationship birthed in childhood, forged in the fires of teenager drama: boys and crushes and sex, rumor mills and social ladders.

Now, at twenty-six the two of them did odd jobs together as they worked to pay for med and law school respectively. This one probably one of their weirdest.

“You know that,” Candice scowled.

“Suck it up, buttercup,” Nina chirped, looking a bit too delighted for Candice’s liking. “The pay check for this one is really, really good. It’s crazy how many people want to pretend mermaids are real. But hey, whatever, money is money.”

Caroline’s fingers flew as she typed, depicting the (mis)adventures of Candice’s and Nina’s latest job. The little pulse she could feel fluttering in her chest grew louder and stronger until two heartbeats seemed to pound inside her.

It was startling when she finally looked up, the sky pitch black outside her window, the clock on her computer helpfully informing her it was now 1:29 AM. She had lost hours pouring herself into her stories. Fleshing out the details of Candice’s and Nina’s relationship. Added in family members and romance. It felt good to release the little slice of life into the world.

Quickly, re-reading what she had written, Caroline debated whether she wanted to continue or not. Build a more intricate world or let it go? Let it go, she finally decided. The heartbeat settled down until it was just her own once more.

---

Klaus scowled at his canvas, rather irked that the only paintings he could make lately were distorted smears. Don’t mistake him, he was proud of his abstract work, just not when it conveyed frustration and a lack of inspiration.

He tossed his brush aside, wiped the paint flecks from his skin. Running an aggravated hand through his curls, he decided to get out of the house.

---

The park wasn’t a place he would normally frequent, but desperate times and all that rot. As expected though, as he let his eye drift around the scene before him nothing much caught his attention. There were screaming children, tired parents, enamored couples. The typical things one might expect to see and none of them sparked new passion or anything of the sort.

And then he saw her.

She looked frustrated, not unlike himself really, but there was something about the way her eyes flashed with her ire. The purposeful way she moved as she went from a walk to a run.

Klaus left not long after, carrying his unexpected muse with him.

When he made it back to his apartment, images came to him in a hurry. A passionate gesture with an arm. A cat-like smile, mischievous and playful. Gorgeous flashing eyes, bright with temper.

As soon as he started, he couldn’t stop. The vivacious blonde woman stayed a constant, but others soon came to him. A red-head. A brunette. An unexpected desire to do a study of water and distortion. The shimmer of scales.

It was certainly some of his best work.

---

Caroline walked listless down the sidewalk, a heavy smear of concealer under her eyes to disguise their puffiness. She wasn’t sure how many tears she had cried. Enough that though her heart still felt like it was being crushed, there were none left to shed.

Just a few months ago she had felt on top of the world, new stories seeming to pour out of her by the dozens. An original work ready to be published. And then a week ago she got a phone call.

Her mom was sick. Cancer. Terminal.

She didn’t live far away, and Caroline had dropped everything to go and visit. She still visited everyday, making sure her mom was comfortable, that she was getting the best care available. Yet she felt useless, she was doing everything she could and it seemed to be nothing at all.

And her mom could see it wearing on her, had all but kicked her out and told her to come back when she had a chance to take a breath.

Well, here she was. Breathing. And not feeling better at all.

She kept walking. Not bothering to scramble for cover when a drizzle built into a downpour. Moved at the same pace and ducked into the next building several feet down.

She blinked. Blinked again. Wondered if stress and grief had made her go crazy.

Apparently, she had stepped into a gallery, and spread across the walls were snapshots of Candice and Nina, exactly as she had pictured them. She even saw would looked like a glimpse of mermaid tails.

Impossible.

---

What are the odds? Klaus thought, incredulous. His muse just stepped into his gallery.

---

Caroline’s eyes darted around wildly. If she had been more famous, then maybe she would think someone hacked her manuscript or something. But she wasn’t. Not at all.

Her upcoming book would be her first full length novel, everything else she had published in magazines. Short stories and poetry. An editorial or two when her inspiration was particularly low.

How could this be?

Because it wasn’t just a resemblance to her characters. They were identical, down to the pattern of freckles across Candice’s nose.

“We’re technically closed, love.”

Caroline jumped, startled out of her wide-eyed examination of Candice.

“O-oh,” she stuttered, whirling around. “Sorry, the door was open. And it was raining. I-do you know who did these?” She rushed out, desperately needing the answer.

---

Klaus was startled by the woman’s apparent mania, her resemblance to the muse he discovered in the park almost nowhere to be seen. He answered her though, perhaps that would lend some clarity to this baffling situation.

“I did.”

He stumbled back when she lunged for him, her thin fingers deceptively strong as she gripped his arms, eyes wide and gleaming. “When? How? What made you think of these images?”

“Bloody hell, woman! They just came to me. I was in the park looking for some inspiration and I got it.” He certainly wasn’t going to mention it came from her now. She seemed unhinged enough already.

---

Caroline stumbled back, an absolutely absurd idea bouncing around her brain.

This is crazy, Caroline. Crazy!

And yet she couldn’t help herself. What could it hurt?

With almost no conscious thought, her hand reached for her bag, snagging the small notebook she always kept on her. Her movements egged on by half remembered dreams, flashes of figures she thought belonged only in her mind.

She grabbed a pen and started to write. How a distraught blonde named Caroline stumbled into a gallery and discovered paintings of people she had thought she only imagined. How she had an extraordinary idea and started to write. Write out her story. Penning out a future in which a doctor calls as she finished writing. Calling to report a miracle. That after numerous tests checking and double checking, it seems Caroline’s mother’s cancer has gone into remission.

The pen dropped from her nerveless hands. Her heart pounding in her throat, her breath halted as seconds stretched like hours.

And just as she was about to ridicule herself for her insanity, her cell phone rang.

---

Author’s Note: Yes, I did cheat and wrote about writing. I also liked this story’s concept more than I ended up liking the execution :/. It’s definitely a weird one though.

Anyway, the title means “The Pen is Mightier” obviously derived from saying the pen is mightier than the sword. Unfortunately, an Englishmen first said that so in my quest to make a non-English title I did some mental somersaults. Basically I took the idea that writer’s are the “gods” of their own worlds (which Caroline makes even more literal here). And one of the first monotheistic religions known to us is Zoroastrianism which originated from Persia. And that concludes today’s peek into the weird way my mind works.

#Klaroline #KlarosummerBingo #Klaroline Fanfiction #Klaroline Drabbles #Klaroline Edits #Klaroline Photosets #Klaroline Aesthetics #My Writing #My Edits

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johs2803 · 5 years

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The Great illusions

(This is a short practice snippet of an AU in the Miraculous Ladybug universe. Nothing is really all that different except Master Fu is the one to consistently choose who gets which miraculous and they stay with them. Secret identities are universally maintained. To quickly summarize. Alya is wondering why she, an honest and forthright person; whose passion for truth has set her on a oneway track to becoming a journalist, was granted the power of what essentially amounts to lying. Heavily inspired by a certain scene in Terry Pratchett’s “Hogfather”.)

I DO NOT OWN OR IN ANY WAY LAY CLAIM TO MIRACULOUS: TALES OF LADYBUG AND CHAT NOIR. ALL CHARACTERS FALL UNDER THOMAS ASTRUC AND ASSOCIATES. THIS IS A WORK OF FANFICTION FALLING UNDER THE LAWS OF FAIR USE AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR ANY KIND OF PROFIT.)

Alya, heaved a heavy sigh as she read the latest comment asking for more details and analysis on a certain fox themed superhero who had helped in the latest akuma attack. Once again, she replied with, that despite the ladyblogs best efforts, Rena Rouge was as wily and elusive as her namesake and thus she could offer little in terms of illumination. She quickly deflected any more prodding by posting more pictures of the heroes in action, even that annoying turtle boy. These days, she had shifted her ladyblogs focus from exposing the heroes’ identities, to posting the action, the fact she had a front row seat didn’t hurt when it came to describing details. When pressed for reasons she just said that she had started to respect their secrets and didn’t want to impede them any further, which most took at face value. She couldn’t justify her truth crusade if it meant her secret had to stay secret. But telling her fans this was just one more lie she had to shoulder.

If anything, continuing her ladyblog and never mentioning that she had a camouflaged camera drone follow her and her cohorts; was a huge help in maintaining her secret identity. The very thing she had tried to unveil from Ladybug for months before the package with her camera drone had come with hexagonal black box that would rock her world at its foundation. Her childhood dream and adolescent hopes had become true in a way she had never dared believe. Being a superhero, working with her idol and other like her, she wouldn’t trade it for anything. Except, as the case was, her ideals. Finishing her posts Alya held her head in her hands, her monitor displaying a close-up of Rena Rouge smiling at the camera. Her reflection aligned perfectly with the image, except, the one in the mask was happy having the time of her life, the one behind it was starting to doubt why heroes should ever need to wear masks.

“You look like you have your tail in a trap.” Alya jumped. She had been so lost in thought, that the mischievous voice above her head had shaken her from stupor rather suddenly.

Her malaise of doubt turned surprised bemusement quickly turned into a slight giggle as she looked up seeing the adorable vulpine kwami floating above happily snacking on a cherry.

“You’d think I’d be used to you sneaking up on me like that by now.” She said rotating her chair to get a better look at him. Her? Did primordial embodiments of abstract concepts have genders?

“Please, Kit. I’ve been doing surprises since before the earth was cosmic dust.” He said smugly gulping down a cherry and spitting the seed in her trash bin. Her unprecedented love for cherries had been one of the easier lies to tell her family, if only cause Trixx looked absolutely adorable when eating them. “Seriously though; something is clearly bothering you kit, and I’m guessing it has something to do with me.”

It was a statement not an accusation, and Alya was experienced enough in deduction to know how he had arrived at that conclusion, her monitor still portraying her heroic persona. “It’s not you Trixx. It’s just…” She paused. “Being a hero is a lifelong dream for me, and I love you, amongst other things, for making it come true. What’s bothering me is the lies. I always knew heroes had their secrets, but I never knew it was gonna be this hard keeping them.”

“You’re doing well so far I’d say.” Trixx said nodding to the monitor with her comments deflecting the probes and her drone posing as the real reporter.

“That’s not what I meant.” She replied.

After a moment, Trixx replied with. “Ah, so it’s the act itself that’s eating you?”

Alya just nodded.

“You know why you need to lie. Your friends, your sisters, your parents; all of them can be used against you if everyone knew who you were behind the mask.”

“Yeah. I get that. What I don’t get, is why I got the power of lying in addition to having to maintain lies. I mean look at Ladybug and Chat noir. One of them can make everything right, and the other can destroy everything bad. Even Shelly is a protector obnoxious as he is. I just can’t help but thinking about Lila, you know the girl I told you about who Hawkmoth gave a knockoff of your powers to? She lied constantly and nobody whom she contacted was happy afterwards. The way I see it, lying and illusions just hurt people in the end.” She ended her tirade with huff slumping in her chair.

Trixx had sympathetic look on him and just floated down to her side rubbing her cheek. “You’ve done good things with them though. Like when you saved your akumatized sisters or that time your boyfriend was about to be eaten and your illusory doppelgangers of him confused that monster?”

She smiled to herself. She had done that. Even if Nino had been less than grateful to her for it. One of the very few points of friction between them was that he did not like Rena Rouge and she did not like Carapace. Whom, for reasons she could not for the life of her fathom, he deeply admired. Alongside LB and CH of course.

“Yeah. Still leading people away from the truth always seems to go wrong. If they are lead to believe the wrong things it just ends up hurting them and benefitting those that maintain them.”

Trixx floated away and up to the ceiling and asked, “Then why do you tell your sisters that the tooth fairy comes to give them money for their lost teeth, when you and your sister do it each night they put them under their pillow?”

Alya looked up at that. “Well, that’s…” She stammered. “…different. They’re just kids, all they need now is that they are safe and that there is some magic out there. Not including Miraculous’. Besides they’re smart, so like me and my big sis, they’ll realize one day that it was just a story we used to make them happy.” She quickly added. “Heck, it helped me want to find out the truths everybody tried to hide.”

He turned around and pointed at her in an ‘AHA’ pose. “My point exactly! Not all illusions can be hurtful and without realizing it you are telling them the lesser illusions, so they have the practice necessary to believe in the great illusions!”

“The great illusions?” She asked puzzled.

“Yep” he said with an air of self-importance. “Justice, duty, beauty those kinds of things.”

“Wait, those aren’t the same at all!” she objected

“You think so? Then take the universe and examine it with the strongest lens you know off and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy or even one boson of beauty! And yet, you BELIEVE that those things exist in the very fundamentals of this existence and that all of it may be judged via that tinted lens.” Trixx darted around in great arcs as he spoke but ended his final statement right in front of her face.

“But if we don’t believe that, what else is there?”

“Just the things you can perceive.” Alya’s face dropped a tad as the weight of Trixx’s words hit her. “If you don’t believe in things that aren’t real, how else can they become?”

Alya was quiet, not quite able to process what Trixx had told her. He’d know better than anyone, but were all the things she believed built on a lie others had told her? She had never considered it, and now that she did with her discerning reporter’s ambition, she did not like the conclusions she saw.

Trixx air of importance vanished, replaced by sympathy as he floated to her cheek and hugged it as best as his miniscule frame could managed. She smiled a genuine smile as she scratched the top of his head. The, literally, tiny gesture had a colossal impact. Not unlike how she hugged away the nightmares her little sisters sometimes woke from, she mused.

After a while Trixx floated back and with his own genuine smile said; “Look ki- Alya, like any power in the universe, illusions may be used to hurt others as much as they may be used to help them. Creation may overwhelm other entities and destruction does not discriminate between good and bad. It doesn’t so much matter what the power is, as what you do with it. And going along with one or more of the great illusions does not make you a liar. It makes you someone who wants to do good in the world and make what is essentially one massive lie reality. And I know that you know that that is a good thing.”

Alya pulled him back into a cheek hug which he happily returned.

“Thanks Trixx.” She said. Then with a teasing lilt. She said, “I’d still like a kwami of truth though.”

Picking up on her less than serious tone, his reply was the opposite in its earnesty. “Well, I wouldn’t trade you for any human in the world.”

(This was an idea I had after watching a subpar filmatization of an otherwise great author’s works. I wanted to practice my writing and thought this was a good place to start. I’d appreciate any constructive criticism and hope you all have a miraculous day!)

#alya cesaire #trixx #miraculous ladybug #fanfic #snippet #critical thinking #illusions #terry pratchett #hogfather #miraculous fanfic #miraculous

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salixj · 5 years

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Every individual feels the tension between what we “want” to do, and what we “should” do. In Jewish thought, this constant state of flux is a cornerstone of practice and belief often referred to as “Obligation”.

When I first came to Israel 9 years ago, it was an idea that I only knew in the abstract way we all experience it; I had never grappled with it in any real, practical sense. Today, it is the cornerstone of my deepening Jewish observant (though not “religious”) identity.

The light of this latent value, buried deep in a Jewish soul I had no awareness of at the time, found its first flicker in the stairwell of a random Tel Aviv hotel as the first Shabbat I ever celebrated came in on a regular April evening in 2011.

I couldn’t tell you what changed as I walked up to the roof, the song of my Birthright group all around me, to experience Shabbat for the first time. But I do know that this past Shabbat, eyes closed yet tearing up as I sang the Shabbat liturgy in a Jerusalem synagogue, I returned to that stairwell in my mind’s eye. I do so nearly every Friday night that I make it to Synagogue to live my Jewish birthright of welcoming Shabbat, as my family has done for millennia.

That I am blessed enough to even have this experience is a kind of miracle in and of itself. The son of a Jewish mother and Catholic father, I grew up in a loving, tolerant home where secular rational humanism in the Judeo-Christian tradition, taught by example, was the only religion I ever knew. And for 25 years of my life, it had never occurred to me that you could you could need anything more in a value system.

My parents taught me it’s wrong to steal; they taught me it’s wrong to lie; they taught me to always strive to treat others as I would want to be treated. They did right by me in the morality department, and I’m forever grateful to them for it.

And yet, experiencing Shabbat for the first time pierced me so deeply that it found Jewish bedrock beneath a lifetime of secular and enlightenment training and conviction. When I felt the joy and the beauty of welcoming Shabbat for the first time, I knew there was something resonating in me.

But at the same time, I couldn’t have told you what it was — even less why it was, or what it meant. Nor was it a transcendental experience where the clouds opened up and everything changed in an instant. I didn’t have a religious awakening, much less a revelation. I still haven’t. Looking back on it today, the best way I can describe it is as an inchoate sense of fulfillment and meaning that I never expected to find.

I went back to America after two weeks in Israel. But I was never the same. The next Friday was the first one I ever celebrated Shabbat in my own home. Less than two years later, I would be doing the same thing from my new home in Jerusalem.

A look behind the curtain at the cult of self

I’ve given a lot of thought to what I felt in that stairwell seven years ago.

I’ve given a lot of thought to what value could be so powerful that it resonated through a lifetime of Jewish ignorance, yet so amorphous that I couldn’t understand what it was even as it was kindling the light of generations inside of me.

My answer is Obligation.

Everywhere you look in modern culture and society, the individual is center and supreme. And in a certain sense, the individual has never been more free. Every day, the abundance of the modern world calls us more and more to the banner of the cult of self.

Popular culture packages this idea in many forms. You should always accomplish evermore for yourself; you must consume more for yourself. This is the immutable law of the modern world — never take on any responsibility except for one laid upon you by your own impulses for self-gratification.

This lie, like a drug, is as intoxicating as it is destructive. Taken to its logical conclusion, it only produces a uniquely toxic blend of mania, nihilism, and misery. I know this because, in my time competing for Israel as a Skeleton athlete, I learned the uniquely empowering liberation of practicing purposeful, targeted, self-abnegation.

If I had to sum up everything I learned in a decade of preparing myself to compete in international athletics, it would be this: In every moment, the soul should absolutely have the freedom to choose, but it does not follow that the soul should choose absolute freedom in every moment.

That the above statement is provocative in 2019 goes without saying. Freedom is the supreme virtue of our time. But where freedom has no self-imposed constraints, where our desires become our only moral compass, freedom actually cannibalizes itself and loses all meaning. The concept requires negative space — times when we voluntarily choose to NOT follow our every impulsive desire — to bring meaning and joy into our lives. Where no constraint exists, freedom cannot contrast against it, and so itself cannot exist.

Paradoxically, the freedom of the cult of self actually turns us into slaves of our impulses.

Letting go of the big lie

Experiencing this truth of the human soul viscerally via my secular athletic life, combined with my deepening relationship and understanding of Shabbat, caused a revolution in my thinking.

Despite my secular upbringing, I couldn’t keep believing the big lie of modern consumer culture. Eventually, I stopped being afraid to admit that the lived truth of my emotional, mental, and physical life would by definition have to be true for my spiritual life.

I stopped believing external Obligation was, by definition, oppressive and evil. I stopped believing that the only virtue there is to aspire to in this life is for everything to be about me, in all places, and at all times.

Against a meaningful and just objective standard, there is value in doing something that is hard; there is value in doing something that challenges the will; there is value in doing something that we do not necessarily “want to do” in the moment. And the reason is because, just like muscle and bone, the mind and the soul must flex against resistance or languish into atrophy.

It is this concept of choosing to act not on impulse but rather against a virtuous objective standard, and its central role in Jewish spirituality and faith, that served as the stepping off point for me to experience Jewishness not just as an identity but as an exercise of my soul.

Shabbat, the weekly Obligation of the Jewish people to remember God’s act of Creation, kindled the lived spiritual practice of this idea inside of me.

Every Friday night, I am mindful that it is Shabbat. I do not work on my day job or various side projects; I stay off of social media and news sites; I say the blessings over candles and wine whenever possible; I go to Synagogue for Kabalat Shabbat whenever I am home in Israel, and sometimes when I am visiting my family in New Jersey.

To this day, Shabbat remains the most visceral expression of Obligation that I experience. It is my weekly rebellion against the selfishness and nihilism of the modern world.

Yearning to lead a life well lived

If you are expecting to now read that I now keep all the Halacha, pray three times a day, and never watch a movie on Shabbat, I am afraid I will have to disappoint you. To be fair, I had already admitted I am not what anyone would mistake for an observant Jew, in the common understanding of that term.

My working definition of free will remains 100% in the secular Enlightenment tradition. One of the parts of Jewish observance, tradition, and faith I struggle with the most is the idea of external punishment for transgressing Obligation that does not cause harm to others. I believe that failing to follow an Obligation is harmful to myself — a punishment by definition — and that there is no place (or need) for human hands to dole it out.

My journey into Jewish Obligation has already been a long and fulfilling one, and it is without a doubt far from complete. In reality, my lived Jewish Obligation is, as of today, cherry-picked and I readily admit it. I am not perfect. Some will call me a hypocrite, and that’s fine. But this is an honest assessment of where I am at this point in my life.

Like all of us and in spite of my best intentions, I do not always live up to the standard I would like to see myself living up to. But I am trying. Most importantly, I have reversed my blind and fundamental attachment to the decadent thinking that infects our modern life and sadly causes so much needless pain. I am now open and aware of the benefits of accepting Obligation into my spiritual life, and see the impossible wisdom of that great Jewish theological belief that a life lived entirely free of the uplifting power of Obligation cannot be a life well lived.

And even in just that change — and the yearning to be better that it brings — the awakening of my Jewish soul has already enriched my life more than I could have ever imagined.

ABOUT THE AUTHORBradley Chalupski is the winner of Israel's first medal in an international IBSF Skeleton competition, represented Israel in two IBSF Skeleton World Championships, and is the first Israeli athlete to compete in an IBSF Skeleton World Cup circuit event. In college, he interned for then Senator Joe Biden and later went on to intern in the policy department of NJ Governor Jon Corzine while earning his J.D. from the Seton Hall School of Law. He made Aliyah in 2012 and has lived in Jerusalem ever since. [Brad is my (Salixj’s) son-in-law]

#Israel #family #Judaism

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