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clairebeauchampfan · 4 years

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The biter bit. How ‘liberals’ are consuming their own

I’ll begin this post, as one has to nowadays, by reiterating my sincere commitment to whatever righteous cause takes your fancy this week. No one can accuse me of not following the party line, or having ‘wrongthought’. I freely confess to my past, deviationist, splittist opinions, and respectfully ask to be sent to a reeducation camp, preferably among the Uighurs.

Meanwhile, back in what remains of the Free World, I have to laugh when I see so many prominent ‘Liberals’ getting themselves in hot water because of what they have said or done in contravention of the Groupthink that they themselves once so earnestly supported.

For example Steve Bell, the wannabe socialist cartoonist, is being ‘let go’ from his contract with The Guardian, the UK’s Liberal-left paper of record. No doubt partly because of his age (ageism being rife amongst right-on folk) but perhaps also because they are looking for a young BIPOC/woman/LGBTQ+ to replace him, and , let’s face it, Steve Bell is...ahem...an older non-BIPOC non-female person (that’s an old white male, to those who aren’t woke). The Guardian recently published a Bell cartoon showing Priti Patel, the Home Office (Interior) Minister as an ugly cow - or a bull- forgetting that for Hindus, half the UK’s people of South Asian ancestry, the bovine is sacred. Cue an outraged and insulted minority, offended even more when the paper refused to apologise or withdraw the cartoon. Oops! Someone had to go.......Judge for yourself and see if it is sexist and racist at the same time.

Priti Patel

Steve Bell’s Cartoon in The Guardian

In Hollywood, long a bastion of right-on wokeness and insincere platitudinising, non-BIPOC /LGBTQ+ actors have - or so I read in the Daily Strumpet and the Feudal and Reactionary Times- apparently become unemployable, especially if they are of a ‘problematic’ age or sex (that’s old, white and male, again). If you aren’t sufficiently diverse, forget it; there are no up-coming parts for you. At least Historical fiction drama, Outlander has lots of butch men running around in skirts, which goes to show how advanced Scotland was in the 18th Century. No wonder it’s my favourite TV drama, though it does show a problematic lack of diversity among the lead characters. Time for a colour-blind recast? I mean, look what they can do with Henry V. Chiwetel Ejiofor to play Scottish clansman Jamie Fraser! Bring it on!

Manwhile JK Rowling, favourite children’s author, (and, once, famously right-on as a Labour supporter, fierce critic of the wicked Tories and feminist) together with Ur-feminist Germaine Greer, have both been pilloried for apparent Transphobia, for daring to suggest that if a male cuts all his bits off and fills his body up with female hormones to develop breasts (and other more messy surgical treatment) he does not become a woman, per se.It’s a point of view. Personally, if a lad believes he is a lassie and not merely a eunuch, who am I to put a spoke in his wheel? If she is still armed with a male weapon and goes into the Ladies loo only to pee on the seat, on the other hand..... and I really think that teenagers whose raging hormones and developing brains may encourage them to identify as a member of the opposite sex, ought to have to wait until they are a tab more mature before taking an irreversible decision on their sexuality, and shouldn’t be encouraged by adults into taking such action. And Doctors shouldn’t perform such operations on minors. It’s a point of view. Don’t judge me!

I leave you with these extracts from an interesting article from the Sydney Morning Herald, about Twitter mobbing.

“........You can say that ridiculing Twitter’s exotic grievances is an easy sport. Sure, except that years ago it seemed to me that Twitter wasn’t merely reflecting, but engendering and magnifying, a kind of wickedly censorious piety. And one that was increasingly influencing journalists and artists. I’ve had editors more interested in avoiding controversy than in judging the accuracy and value of my work.

Online, piety has no trouble finding affirmation. But the thing with piety is that it stubbornly resists private examination. This might work for the seminary, but it seems ruinous for a writer. Unless you’re an awful one. In which case, this is an optimal environment to work in – so, congratulations on being born to an age that enthusiastically supports your mediocrity.

I suspect the most politically pious in this country won’t be satisfied until certain professions have yielded their specific values and functions in deference to a vision of society that is perfectly liberated from aggravation. It’s a vision of a giant creche.

All contest would be outlawed. Literature would become dogma. Universities would moonlight as daycare centres. The law would abandon its duty to evidentiary thresholds and the presumption of innocence, and become a place of infinite credulity. Comedy would cede the joys of irreverence, and prefer applause to laughter. Journalism would reject curiosity, exploration and corroboration, in favour of politically sanctioned advocacy and “authentic” personal essays. Increasingly, newsrooms will serve their readers a narrow, ideologically curated diet.

I’ve disagreed with plenty of Bari Weiss’s work, but I agreed with her this week when she wrote, in her open letter resigning as an opinion editor at The New York Times, that “a new consensus has emerged in the press ... that truth isn’t a process of collective discovery, but an orthodoxy already known to an enlightened few whose job is to inform everyone else”.

These days, it’s quite common to hear: “It is imperative that a writer of non-fiction write only about experiences they’ve had.” ( I thought it was supposed to apply to writers of fiction) When confronted with this stupidity, I experience my own violent irrationality and consider applying the credo in extremis by torching all newsrooms and the history sections of libraries.

A common defence of the left’s censoriousness – however venomous and trivial – is that it is merely free speech deployed against another’s. That’s fundamentally true, and it’s also disingenuous: the threat of mobilised zealotry is chilling speech.

I can’t prove the negative here – I can’t measure the things not written or said. But I can tell you that I’ve spoken to a few eminent writers about this – authors of works we’d consider classics – who have told me they would not dare to publish the work today. One writer told me she had not slept the night she spoke to me about such things, so fearful was she that I’d publish it. That’s a problem.

It’s also a problem when scholars are sacked for tweeting links to academic papers, when good faith cannot be distinguished from bad, when writers self-censor or have to explain that their insistence on complexity is owed to intellectual integrity and not, say, their belief in white supremacy or Satan.

Increasingly, those who have contributed to a culture of outrageous sensitivity are being impaled on the swords they helped sharpen. Past months have resembled a kind of woke purge. Which makes schadenfreude very easy to indulge, but we’ll need to resist that dubious pleasure lest we perpetuate this cycle of mob-ruled destruction of careers and reputations.

This isn’t either/or. It shouldn’t be truth versus freedom. It shouldn’t be inferred that criticism of this censoriousness means that the critic doesn’t believe there aren’t righteous battles being fought. But you can’t tell me that elements of this online piety aren’t absurd, indulgent or destructive.

You can’t tell me that middle-class folk aren’t publicising interpersonal spats as proof of “systemic violence”, or that we’re not partially cannibalising culture in a moment of historic uncertainty and vast, easily industrialised disinformation. Or that I can’t resist or make fun of Jacobin zealotry. You can’t.

Martin McKenzie-Murray, Sydney Morning Herald

It looks like I’m guilty of schadenfreude myself. Oops!

#twitter mobbing #wrongthought

#outlander

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vincent-frankenstein · 4 years

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different anon, but heck yeah u should definitely infodump about lucid dreaming!! im really interested in it

aaaaa okay !!! uh hold onto ur ears yall im abt to talk em off lmao

so !! if u didnt know, lucid dreaming is basically when you become aware that you’re dreaming while youre in a dream. once you’re aware, you can take control of the dream in literally any way u want — u can do anything, go anywhere, meet anyone, all with the knowledge that nothing can hurt u and nothing can stop u

its a fascinating concept and, the feeling when u actually become lucid for the first time? its better than anything else in the world. its the most invigorating thing u can ever feel, i think. but actually becoming lucid is, ,, , , hm. a time and a half.

putting the rest under a cut bc, hooooo boy this is gonna get long

first things first! you absolutely have to keep a dream journal. forgetting ur dreams is all well and good when ur not trying to accomplish anything in them, but if you become lucid and then wake up with only the vaguest memory of what you actually did? thats painful.

u can either go all out and get a fancy journal and write them down physically each morning, or u can do what i do and just download an app. i personally use the app Dream Catcher, which lets u tag ur dreams for easy organization. just get in the habit of writing down your dreams every morning, and if you really, really cant remember anything, just write down that you didnt dream anything that day. you’ll train your brain to remember your dreams better

secondly! reality checks! are absolutely imperative! the idea behind them is that, if you do something throughout the day that “proves” your reality, eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams as well. for example, a common thing in my dreams is that i’ll have extra fingers, so i check my hands a lot throughout the day.

it can’t just be a casual thing, too. if all you do is glance at your hands and b like “yo looks normal, we gucci”, then you’ll do the same in your dreams even if you have Weird hands. trust me, Dream-You is an idiot, you gotta be obvious with this stuff. take a few moments, look at your hands, count out your fingers, and really think to yourself “am i dreaming?”

try to get in the habit of doing that at least 15 times a day, and eventually you’ll start doing it in your dreams too.

now, if you just stick with doing those two things — which is what i’m doing right now — your chances of becoming lucid will raise astronomically. even just those two tiny things can train your brain into realizing when the world around you is real and when it isnt. you can also attempt something really easy called a MILD — a mnemonic-induced-lucid-dream — which can help your chances even more without upping the effort

whenever you go to bed, just take a few moments — even just five minutes can help — and just. lay there. and think to urself, again and again “the next scene will be a dream” or “i will become lucid in my dreams tonight” or something similar. get ur brain really focused on lucid dreaming right before you fall asleep and chances are, those Vibes will bleed over into ur dreams and you’ll become lucid

practice those three things consistently, every day, and pretty soon you’ll start becoming lucid. it takes time, though! dont be discouraged if you end up not becoming lucid for the first few weeks, or even months. sometimes your brain just needs a bit of extra training

that’s what ive been doing for the past year or so — bc damn do i Not have the energy to actually put in too much effort — but!!! there are other techniques!!

my personal favorite is the WBTB, or wake-back-to-bed method. with this technique, you set your alarm for roughly 5-6 hours after you go to sleep so you’ll wake up inside of one of your REM cycles, specifically one where your dreams will be the most vivid. dont do anything, just roll over and go right back to sleep.

you can even use a MILD along with this, repeat whatever mantra u usually use as you fall back asleep. you should start to see hypnagogic imagery — blobs of color and vague shapes floating before your eyes. just observe them. at one point, they’ll start forming more familiar shapes, and places, and maybe even people — and there should be a moment, a snap, where you go from observing these images to actually being in the scene. you literally build the dream around yourself, its magical

i have read that WBTB can cause sleep paralysis, but i’ve never personally experienced any problems with it, aside from the fact that im always tired the next day.

another thing that could severely increase your chances of being lucid but also involves Effort — meditation. specifically mindfulness meditation. the act of bringing full awareness to your Existence, honing in on just Your body, Your mind, Your breath, will make you a more aware, mindful person, which in turn makes you more perceptive of dream signs. also, the ability to clear your mind and center yourself with a moment’s notice really comes in handy when the dream becomes destabilized and you have to take control

if ur an adhd lad like me — or neurodivergent in any way, really — the idea of meditation can be,,,, terrifying. honestly, i havent meditated in like six months now, because it really wasnt?? doing anything for me?? mostly because im absolutely incapable of sitting still for that long without Something to stimulate me

so! loophole! guided meditations. having someone else guide you through the process can make it a bit easier to focus. just find one that works for u on youtube. there are even guided meditations made specifically to prime ur brain for lucid dreaming!

so thats how you get lucid. now for when youre lucid

at first, lucid dreaming is going to be extremely hard. dreams fall apart very easily — if you get too overexcited or if a dream-character looks at you the wrong way or if you cant seem to do what you want to do, your lucidity can fade and you’ll either go back to being your normal dream self or you’ll wake up. dreams are volatile and hard to control, and even harder to master

thats where meditation comes in handy. youll have a much easier time controlling your dreams if you can look at the world around you, take a breath, center yourself, and know that you can control it. that being said, you can absolutely learn to take control without ever having meditated a day in your life. its all about your mindset!

you have to go into it with confidence. the key to controlling your dreams is knowing that they’re your dreams. you cant forget that you’re in control. thats why i feel like learning to lucid dream doubles as a lesson in self-confidence — you have to learn to trust yourself, trust that you can handle any scenario thrown at you and come out on top.

if you can achieve this mindset, you can literally do anything. ive had maybe 50 lucid dreams since i started learning about them — which… is honestly a really low amount, but. i havent really had the time/energy to really throw myself into it as much as i want to. but just in those dreams, ive flown, ive shapeshifted, ive met my sides, ive teleported to vast, gorgeous lands and seen some of the most beautiful things ive ever seen. anything is possible in a lucid dream; thats why its so worth it to put in the effort

but when youre first starting out, itll be extremely hard to maintain that mindset. like i said, Dream-you is dumb as shit — you’ll forget youre dreaming, you’ll be unable to control anything, you’ll wake up before you manage to accomplish anything. more often than not, the dream will destabilize, which is Not Fun

if the dream starts to destabilize — basically, if things start going fuzzy or vague, if you suddenly cant see, if you can feel ur body in bed, basically anything that points towards you waking up — there are ways to fix it. literally just spinning around helps for some reason? spin around, fall down, run ur hands along anything u can find and feel the texture, or just demand that the dream stabilize itself. most of the time, thatll work

and if it doesnt, dont be discouraged. theres always another night to dream

so basically: start a dream journal, do reality checks, mmmmaybe meditate if youre up for it, and your dreams will become like. at least 10x more interesting. trust me, try flying: its literally the best feeling in the entire world

its just !!! such a huge, incredible thing, and its so fascinating to learn about too. all the different ways you can train your brain, all the different things you can do, all the studies done on the subject. i suggest reading about Steven LaBerge or keith hearne. hearne led the study that proved lucid dreaming existed in the first place! he got a lucid dreamer to signal to him that he was conscious while asleep using REM (rapid-eye movement), because lucid dreaming happens during the REM state. also, robert waggoner’s book Gateway to the Inner Self is really fascinating too!

hm wow i really went ham here lmao

thanku for giving me a chance to infodump im very happy rn

#me: /spends a full half-hour infodumping abt something most people havent even heard of/#now if only i could remember this much when it comes to schoolwork lmaooooo #ty for the Infodump Permission im !! vibin rn #lowkey highkey this makes me wanna get back into it. . . might do a wbtb tonight...#personal #logan talks #lucid dreaming #Anonymous

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