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illuminating-the-darkness · 5 years

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Fruit:

Fruit is a vessel by which the seeds of plants attempt to embed themselves into fecal matter through the digestive tract of animals in order to improve the chances of growing in good moist soil and also insuring that the animal spreads the seed far from the parent plant as the animal is likely to excreet at a distance from its food source, to do this fruit has to have a pleasing taste so that animals will want to eat it and as such most fruit is full of natural sugars making most of them sweet to the taste however others are more bitter or juicy enough to provide hydration, interestingly some give off spices in an attempt to defend themselves against being eaten. Fruits tend to be high in vitamins, natural minerals and benefitial chemicals. Fruits usually grow on trees, bushes and vines. The following is a partial list of fruits:

-Some fruits are poisonous, this will be dealt with in later posts.

Apple:

Apples are rounded fruit that can be yellow, green, red or pink or some combination of these colours. Apples are sweet and moist to the taste although some can be slightly bitter. Apples are produced by Apple Tree’s which are members of the rose family. Apples have soft interiors of white-green flesh and a hard central core containing seeds, the leftover cores become the bed for the seeds within when a new tree grows. Apples begin to grow in Spring and mature in Autumn. Apples have a long association with witchcraft from their depictions in fairytales such as the poison Apple in snow white to the theological depictions of Apples as the fruit of knowledge in the garden of Eden, making Apples in turn a symbol of knowledge and curses in fact the Latin word for Apple is “Malus” which has influenced the English language as “Malice” meaning “to do evil”. In the Paganism of ancient Greece, Apples were also depicted as golden immortality bestowing fruits guarded by the Earth Goddess Gaia’s own dragons and one carved with an inscription designed to provoke a fued amongst Goddesses was used by the Goddess of chaos Eris in an event which sparked the Trojan war. Apples are Venus ruled fruits with many associations with the Goddess including love, fertility and pregnancy, a slices Apple also reveals the five pointed star pattern associated with Venus and Apple tree leaves and flowers are also five pointed, staring into the centre of a cut Apples core can be used in divination practices. Apples once fermented produce alcoholic cider. Apples scents are associated with love and fertility in inscence. Apples have a number of medical uses, Apples can clean the teeth, improve blood sugar levels, reduce stomach acidity, neutralise gout, lower cholesterol, help to purify water when mixed, sooth fever and the crushed leaves can prevent infection when applied to fresh wounds as can Apple cider vinegar which can also help sore throats.

Apricot:

Apricot is a fleshy peach-orange coloured round fruit bearing a central pip or stone which is its seed. Apricots grow on Apricot trees and have short seasons of maturing in early Spring. Apricots prefer warm climates. Apricots taste either sweet or tart and are not very juicy. Apricots are associated with Venus for their five pointed flowers and as such Apricots are associated with love, fertility, beauty, art and attraction. Apricots are most specifically associated with pregnancy due to the pip/kernal in their centre representing a baby within the womb they can therefore be used to promote fertility and health in pregnancy or as Curse effigies in attempting to cause miscarriages. The wooden kernal can also be carved for use in amulets or as runestones. Apricots are thought to be able to reduce tumours when refined as an oil salve. Apricots are also used for their juices in cosmetic skin care. Apricots also have antioxidant effects when ingested which is good for heart disease and diabetes treatments.

Avocado:

Avocados are a tropical and Mediterranean fruit that grows on trees. Avocados are pear shaped or spherical and have dark green almost ribbed, hard cortex’s which soften and brown with ripeness. The inner flesh of an Avocado is a soft light green-cream colour. Avocados prefer warm enviroments with little to no wind, lots of water and require well aerated soil. Avocado can cause allergic reactions in people with allergies and is poisonous to some animals however to humans the fruit tastes savoury. Avocados have a central kernal and like all fruit which has this characteristic the Avacado therefore represents pregnancy and is related to fertility and child birth, this means that it can also be used as a curse effigy in attempting to cause miscarriage. The wooden kernal can also be carved for use in amulets or as runestones. Avocados are good for the heart and blood and contain chemicals which are good for the eyes they are also high in benefitial fats.

Banana:

Bananas are long curved yellow, red or purple fruits that grow in clusters on Banana plants often mistaken for trees. Bananas are somewhat crescent shaped and as such have a slightly phallic apperance. Bananas are green before ripening and turn brown or black when over ripe. Bananas are soft and have a creamy yellow-white, red, purple or brown interiors under their peel. Bananas have a sweet moist taste. Bananas grow in tropical climates. Bananas can be fermented to make alcoholic wines and beers. Due to their high levels of potassium Bananas generate minuet amounts of radioactivity. Banana peels can be used to extract heavy metals from contaminated river waters, when powdered and used for filtration by mixing over 45 minuets, up to 65% of heavy metals can be removed from the water this process can also be repeated for further purification. In some cultures such as in Thailand and Indonesia Bananas are believed to be inhabited by certain ghosts and spirits. Banana fibers and bark can be used to make paper and can be boiled and worked into fibres while Banana leaves are waterproof. Due to its crescent and phallic shape Bananas are associated with the moon and with fertility particularly in cures meant to prevent impotence and thus Bananas are sometimes associated with masculine energy. Bananas are also associated with luck and fortune. Bananas can be used as food medicine in the treatments of diabetes, hypertension, cancer, ulcers, diarrhoea, urolithiasis, Alzheimer's and infections. Bananas can also be used for slight pain relief and the leaves or peels can be used to dress wounds.

Bell Pepper:

Bell Peppers are large slightly cubic shaped fruits which come in green, orange, red, yellow, purple and white colours. Although commonly thought of as vegetables Bell Peppers are actually berries. Bell Peppers prefer warm climates and moist soils. Bell Peppers have a slightly sweet but savoury juicy taste and are mostly hollow, Bell Peppers have a central lump of flesh with many small spicy yellow seeds attached to it, the walls of the Pepper are cut into slices or chunks when used in cooking. Bell Peppers contain chemicals which help the eyes and also reduce blood clotting, they also lower cholesterol and help to protect against cancers. Bell Peppers are also good for improving memory and promoting weight loss.

Blackberry:

Blackberries are small round purple-black berries which grow on thorny tangling bramble shrubs. Blackberries appear as though composed of lots of smaller berries as they have a bumpy surface of round juicy blobs in a spherical cluster that make up the berry as a whole. Blackberries contain red-purple juices which can be used as dyes. Blackberries have a sweet taste and can be fermented to produce alcoholic wine and cider, blackberries are also often ground or cooked into jellies and jams. While Blackberries are often harvested in Summer and Autumn but there are folklores that suggests fey and other spirits putrify Blackberries in mid October, this is because colder wet weather promotes molds in the fruit which may be toxic. Because Blackberry brambles are vine like and barbed they can be used in binding spells and curses, bramble thorns are often used in effigy cursing where the effigy is pierced by the thorn in an attempt to cause pain to the victim the effigy represents. Being member of the rose family and having five pointed white or pink flowers Blackberries are associated with Venus all be it with the dark side of the Goddess, this means that Blackberries take on association with love and fertility. Blackberries are effective barriers as their tightly-knit and barbed vines are difficult to pass through this means that smudge stricks made from the twigs are effective at creating spiritual barriers from the belief that as it is physically difficult to pass through so is its essence spiritually hard to pass through, this also means brambles symbolise protection. Blackberries are especially good for the liver and kidneys. The chewed leaves of Blackberries and the shoots brewed into teas can be used to treat mouth ailments such as sores. Tea made from bramble root, bark and leaves is also used in treating coughs. The bramble leaves and root can also be used to treat stomach and intestine problems such as diarrhoea. Bramble leaves also have antibacterial properties and can be used to clean wounds, they also have a cooling effect on burns and skin disorders. Blackberries are also thought to relieve menstrual issues such as period cramps.

Blackcurrant:

Blackcurrants are small spherical black berries that grow on flowering marshland shrubs. Blackcurrants taste sweet and are commonly used to create jams and jellies. Blackcurrants produce deep deep purple juices which can be used to make blue or purple dyes and when fermented produce alcohol cider. Blackcurrants rippen in midsummer and can be harvested through till late Autumn. The Blackcurrant shrub produces strong aromas which can make it useful in producing incenses. The entire Blackcurrant plant can be used to produce teas which are good for promoting blood flow, helping the immune system as well as promoting eye, gut and kidney health and may reduce risk of diabetes. Blackcurrants are full of antioxidants which are good for treating heart and brain diseases and has cosmetic applications in promoting healthy skin for anti-aging treatments. Blackcurrants can also soothe sore throats and treat flu symptoms. Blackcurrant leaves are antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory, antiviral, antitoxin, antiseptic and provide treatment of cancer. Since Blackcurrants have anti-inflammatory properties they can also be used to treat pain, stiffness, soreness and reduce joint and musclar pains. Blackcurrant seed oil can also treat menstrual issues and relieve period cramps. Blackcurrant leaves are diaphoretic and diuretic promoting urination and relief for constipation when made into teas and drunk they are also good for the nerves and nervous system related ailments.

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lookingfornoonat2pm · 5 years

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Love As a Political Force

Introduction

This piece ended up longer than I would have liked, but I am publishing it, even unfinished, because I’m not in any university. I’ve tried to keep it spicy, with a lot of provocations, hot takes, and rhetorical flares. I welcome comments, feedback, and (non-shitty) criticism. It grew to be so long because I wanted to not only move towards a politics of love, but to describe the chief challenges it must rise to. Doing the reading is helpful, but not essential. Familiarity with the play, Angels in America, will help a lot. It would also be helpful to be familiar with Erick Erickson’s structural theory of psychosocial development, as well as Carol Gilligan’s crucially important feminist critique of it. Much of what I’ve written follows a rhetorical path meant to reflect these concepts of individual social and emotional development. But this, too, is not essential. You can get away with only reading part one. The rest addresses contentions and then seeks to invoke radical social change.

Love as a Political Force

tw: rape mention, HIV/AIDS, suicide

More Life

“But still. Still. Bless me anyway,” says Prior Walter to the angels in heaven, in Tony Kushner’s masterpiece, Angels in America. Facing the likelihood of a life cut short, and dramatically diminished by AIDS, in 1985, before AZT became widely available, Prior begs the angels to allow him to endure, even in all the pain and sickness. They tell him that the world will be undone, that life on Earth will end, and that there will be more death than all the great disaster of history thus far. But still—“More life.” Prior Walter blesses the audience at the close of the play. He survived long enough to get on medicine, and outlived the AIDS crisis by the play’s ending. The angels ask him: Who could want to live through such times? Who could want to face the apocalypse and not flinch? What is cowardice now, if we are all willing towards exactly that blessing, all trepidation aside? Much philosophy is dedicated to the question of what sort of person desires beyond the horizon of their death. We are all that now. Instead, I want to ask who the person who faces that horizon must become in order to not be alone on the other side. That answer is easy: A person in love.

We all like that. There, you are done: you have loved, you are forgiven of your duty to reconsider. You know what you mean by love. What could reading on possibly contribute to that? Especially if Hannah Arendt was right, that love is killed the moment it is displayed in public: if you were to argue with me about love, we would both lose everything on this account, or else arrive at not much more than an aesthetic, mutually inscrutable juxtaposition. Arendt is wrong, but I’ll get to that momentarily. Love, I will argue, is the chief theological question of our time, and if you do it right, we might just make it out alive. What I mean by love here is not agape, or the love of the divine, or even a love which is its English homonym, an “agape” love that accepts all. What I mean is a certain kind of love that is a political love. And it is a love which is not a given, nor naturally felt by all, the way the banal emotions are. For this kind of love to exist, politics must exist. But still it may not be the sort of love of Prior Walter for the audience.

Certainly, it is not the love of his ex, Louis—or of God—the characters who abandoned their beloveds once sin and disease befell them. At best, these forms of love are a kind of useful evil. As Zizek said in an easy-to-find youtube video, love is evil. Of all the many reasons to exist, the many reasons to give life, the many reasons to work or to improve oneself—or even to endure horrible indignity in the name of sacrifice—I choose this one. You. You, in particular, above all else, are my reason. This is the love of young sex mates, and of the narcissistic parent. This sort of love says I was ready to abandon this world, to give all my time and wellness to font a fountain in my own bath tub, my own personal Red Sea of healing, but then you came along. You, in particular have given me a reason to share the glories of being, the trials of becoming. Once you cease to be a sufficient reflection of my own reality, somewhere to project and reflect my deepest fears and individual needs, you are no longer worthy of my petty love. Our desire for this reflection is always in surplus of the limited capacity of any person to provide for it. To demand they do so any way, this is philia, and I absolutely chose that word in order to make this tangent: God is a homophile. But he does not love us. Not since we asked for more. Not since we began to ail. It is still love, however, and that is important. Our identity and sensation begins to crawl into the skin of another, and we are put at risk of great disturbance thereby. But it is only the beginning of what love can do for us.

Rainer Maria Rilke writes that young lovers should like to fall in love with a great “tearing down [of] all boundaries; [while] on the contrary, a good marriage is one in which each partner appoints the other to be the guardian of his solitude.” If my touch is the only boundary between myself and the object of my love, my own self-destruction appears to be aimed at them, and I feel theirs to be aimed at me. This would, however, remain true of two lonely stone towers, however joint. No doubt, Rilke’s understanding of love is head-and-shoulders above the mystifications of Zizek or of Arendt. But, if Rilke’s love-as-a-sanctuary respects the dignity and autonomy of the individual, it also robs autonomy from love itself. Love, on this account cannot possibly be theological in its nature (unless our theology is ecstatic or dualist), because it flits out of our reality the moment we stop working with our partners to maintain this sacred vigil. Rilke’s mistrust of our tendency to overextend ourselves in the name of love is related to his distrust of the crowd and populism: that we often find ourselves the instruments of irrational forces. Love in this way can be tragic—we love against our own well-being. Rilke proposes the equity of solitude as a remediation to this threat. It redounds, therefore, to a condition in which love is a sort of contract, and once again our world depends on the well-being of our trustee. Your sex mate chain-smoked a pack of cigarettes just now, or guzzled a heart attack of coffee, or drove home drunk—you are at war with the horizon again. We may disrupt our solitude to try to save them, but this is the folly of the person who is always trying to save their lovers. If you can love from this distance, even in crisis, and you remain in love in spite of these failures, then higher love cannot be either what keeps us separate, or what breaks down our little ego forts. This is love. But it, too, is only another level of love in its development.

The achievement of autonomy and the overcoming of egoism are essential political tasks. Arendt’s mystification of love then can be understood as a latent desire for illimitable love, of the kind Zizek amply describes. Still, her politics contain the form of isonomy before the disaster and before apocalypse which I believe is core to love as a political force. By Arendt’s account, politics can be very nearly encapsulate by this contradictory mandate: Become more yourself even as you forswear any pursuit which empowers that self over others. Yet for Arendt these selves are aggregable, and she resolves this contradiction in the process of alliance, and the being-towards-the-future of natality. We mate and produce offspring (provincially, and not necessarily) with those we love, and we see our reflections in our community, and ideally, in the other communities that make up our political sphere. For we cannot be egoists about the world where we’re dead; “the general future of mankind has nothing to offer the individual life, whose only certain future is death.” Our autonomy is enumerated in part by what we elect (or are forced) to replace ourselves with. This choice can only ever be made by the abolition of individual autonomy and the choice to extend sensation and identity to another, over whom we have no control. Isn’t that another way of saying love? Not love of the state, nor an anonymized brotherhood, but love of our children, and the possibilities their world may contain is what guides, for Arendt, our private love to take on a public life.

There. We may have a tenable sort of love now. Arendt names as “the political” the process by which we will ourselves into immortality and therefore die. Arendt wouldn’t call this love, of course, but she could not imagine a love that is beyond the individual, like Zizek, or Rilke, or Louis or God. In his magnum opus, The Accursed Share, Georges Bataille writes, “Individual love is not in itself opposed to society; yet, for lovers, what they are has no meaning unless it is transfigured in the love that joins them; otherwise it is unavoidable meaninglessness… [Love] is in itself an opposition to the established order.” While Bataille’s writings on love pale in comparison to his writings about sex, we can detect something of what we’re looking for in this passage on silly young people fucking. We want an idea, a sensation, like a talisman or idol that will contain for us the whole of another way of being, even when we are submerged in the evils of life, even amidst apocalypse. As in Zizek’s image of love, the rest of the world fades away, and the object of our love becomes the center of a new, subversive symbolic order. Bataille’s thought here is helpful when we find, for example, that our habits of mind or body, taught to us by our society, are found to be harmful to the people we love. We change, therefore, in our will towards this love. Rilke might blanch—wouldn’t this be allowing love to overturn our sovereignty? In fact, it is the very opposite. When we aim to change to please our beloved, we compromise ourselves and that very ill-founded growth. When we aim to change the quality of our love, we must start with affirming our own sovereignty in that process.

Prior Walter isn’t the only person in Angels in America to actually see the angels. While coming to visit her newly made friend, Prior’s ex-lover’s new lover’s mother, Hannah Pitt is also visited by the angel that has given Prior his visions. Actually, the angel makes her cum. It’s really great, you should totally watch and/or read it. I mean, Meryl Streep performs the divine orgasm in the HBO version, and come one. You want to see that. What brings Prior and Hannah together, oddly, isn’t Prior’s newfound religiosity, but Hannah’s steadfast one. Hannah flew to New York to try to save her closeted gay son’s failed marriage, and finds herself spending most of her time at a Mormon community center. Prior walks in, in a daze of heartbroken misery and HIV-associated dementia, and she starts to try to help him. There are three ways to read this. The first is that Hannah is simply acting out of charity: she sees someone ailing, she’s a good Mormon, and so she helps him. The second is that Hannah is reacting in distress: she sees someone in pain, and seizes upon the demand that places on her—as a person, or a Mormon, or a community center volunteer. Either of these can be easily explained away because charity and duty both stop short of beginning to listen once Prior, the apparent madman, begins to speak. The third, and I believe correct one, is that Hannah is acting out of love. What can we call this love? Something like spontaneous, atomization-crossing enjoyment of the presence of the other.

Crucially, Hannah begins by listening to Prior. He tells her that he knows her son. She’s his ex-lover’s ex-lover’s Mormon mother. So when he collapses in the community center, Hannah begins to actually help him because he has something she wants. She allows herself to be curious about the needs and experiences of a total stranger. She wants to learn more about him. But that’s only a moment before Prior falls to the ground. In 1985, she could have easily called the police, and convinced herself that the sick man was going to make her sick as well. Our excuses for not helping those in our immediate path are plentiful. But Hannah doesn’t only help him stand up, she also goes outside to help him get a cab. She doesn’t only help him get a cab, she goes with him to the hospital. Because of this, and only because of this, Prior learns that she has something that he, as a budding prophet, needs: theology. The book of Hannah and Prior is the book of political love. Wrested from angels, it is a love of love itself; a love of the heroic possibilities and catastrophic risks entailed in pursuing a shared thriving. And it takes practice. Hannah delivers probably the deepest cut against our overdeveloped pseudo-intellectualism: “At first it can be very hard to accept how disappointing life is […] because that’s what it is and have to accept it.” The Mormon mother turns out to have amor fati. What’s more, it is this present, living, breathing love that puts Hannah in a position to receive those in need of it.

The absolute poet of love in our time is bell hooks. On the subject, she has written so much that to address it briefly is cruel both to those who adore her work, and to those who are yet deprived of her insights. However, for the purpose of exploring a politics animated by love, bell hooks cannot be avoided. She writes, “For most folks it is just too threatening to embrace a definition of love that would no longer enable us to see love as present in our families.” This is because love and abuse cannot coexist. We needed fuller, more satisfying, more fire-quenching love, and for too many of us, our parents were either too overworked, or too dependent upon petty pleasures to provide it. And it is now up to us as adults to relearn even the first, all-consuming love so that we can strive to contain it in the second, co-equal love, and develop it further into a love of love itself. Only then can we begin to practice healing that is a vocation of our heart, instead of being blood-bags for the desperate. Hooks furthers her critique through both dialogue with regular people, and material analysis of the actually existing society. She notes that our capacity to love cannot develop under conditions designed to dominate, or which teach us to dominate. We must be be both alive to our connections with other, and respectful of the illimitability of inner experience. Arendtian love disappears in our need to speak honestly and frankly about our families and how they taught us to love. Zizekian love, in its joyful negation of the world in favor of its object, severs the social and spiritual connections which in fact comprise the persons themselves and therefore must be overcome. Rilkean love begins to multiply its autonomy-stewardship dynamic, ideally, to a point where solitude becomes untenable as a description of our lives.

What hooks describes as “a commitment to spiritual life,” is based on the fundamental understanding that in order to thrive, we must have a material base of minimal comfort, and social base of recognition. While we can recognize that love, in its own sovereignty, may bless us with greater capacities to love than what a statistician might predict, this understanding of the spiritual life is core. When we love and seek to magnify that love, and seek to extend its possibilities for the lives of others, we everywhere confront material and spiritual deprivation. Even children of wealthy families find their parents locked in the narcissistic pursuits of public esteem and private capital, and therefore unable to give them the love they needed to thrive as young people. “Spiritual life,” writes hooks, “is first and foremost about commitment to a way of thinking and behaving that honors principles of inner-being an interconnectedness.” Thus, we can see the political life of love as the extension of this network of reciprocity, admiration, nourishment, and respect. When we love love, we desire for all people to develop this capacity to its utmost. We are called on, therefore, to act not from charity, nor from duty, but to protect and uphold the possibility of love growing from every corner of our communities.

When I asked my lover what she thought political love could mean, she described an experience she often has on the subway. Some old woman, or some sad-looking man will board the train, and spontaneously, she will feel that that person deserves her unconditional support and love. The feeling may pass, but the moment is absolute if it seizes us. We become, like Hannah, instruments of love, when we allow our futures to be altered by the love of those we find along the path. We can have this experience with neighbors, if you’re not too closed off to it. We can have this experience with whole communities, if you spend enough time in public to enjoy the life of the city streets. This sort of love does not die by exposure to the public. It lives only through our exposure of ourselves to its possibility in the stranger, the fellow bus passenger, or the neighbor. And we can develop in ourselves our capacity to feel this love. Because I am, in many ways, still trapped in Zizekian love, I will take my lover’s authority on this matter to be beyond critique. Arendt’s structure of the frail plurality of the future, and our relation to it describes the same gambit love as a political force demands. bell hooks describes what that love must contain in order to be a strong, capacious love. Kushner’s Prior Walter shows us how to love ourselves, and protect ourselves from neglect and wrong. Kushner’s Hannah Pitt shows us how essential and unbreakable the love of love becomes when we practice it daily.

The Virtual and the Spiritual

It is an exciting time to be alive, if you have even a modicum of derring-do and/or masochism. The perennial cycle has arguably returned to theology (from its stint in aesthetics from 1989 to 2018) precisely because of the stakes in our politics: Once again, the apocalypse isn’t just an idle threat of clerics, or Schmittian protestants, or geopolitical goliaths. It is a visibly active force reshaping whole countries, and it is a sort of polymorphous death angel: Here the death of a democracy, there a coup; here the burning Amazon jungle, there the burning down of all our parents understood to be honor; here a culture wiped out, there a culture that fetishizes the new to the point of cannibalism. Here a hurricane, there a singularity. The specificities of the apocalypse are uninteresting to me, philosophically speaking, because they all amount the same thing: an unavoidable horizon, and after that, perhaps a freefall. Supposing it is a freefall, there is surely value in investing in parachutes, so to speak, but that’s what people said about bitcoin. The air might be too thin for the parachute to spread properly. Acid rain may burn it any way.

In practical fact, the apocalypse is primarily a matter of labor value. Understanding the apocalypse in terms of freedom is less than useless—noxious, even. You are free to die. Go ahead. Understanding the apocalypse as a matter of justice comes closer to confronting the theological dimension: the caprice of the Earth which produces the obviously unjust situation in which the most polluting nations have thus far experienced the mildest consequences. Labor value more fully encapsulates the primary practical consequences of apocalypse. Life will be made considerably cheaper, to the point of the rule of sovereign brutality. Furthermore, thinking about it in terms of labor value connects our immediate experience to what is beyond the storm. It’s hilarious these days to go to interviewing for white collar jobs. I haven’t heard the question, “Where do you see yourself in ten years?” since 2016. We know the answer, and it’s probably either shoveling heaps of shit or else meticulously placing your shit in the shit container to be delivered to the shit heap. But what is the work for? What good does it do a person to work all their life, if the fruits are enjoyed by someone else? Why should I develop myself any further if I’m just going to jump into the gristmill of someone else’s idea of progress? Understanding the practical reality of the apocalypse as a matter of labor value reasserts the importance of love: what we live for, what we commit to against our better judgment, what wills us beyond the horizon. However we characterize the passive feeling of love, its ugly namelessness accompanies us unconditionally whenever we desire beyond possibility, for the wellness or joy of others.

But which others? For the conservatives, that is practically the only question. With the advent of the virtual, we of course have a massive panoply from which to answer this question. That changes absolutely nothing for the conservative, of course: if anything, it lengthens the list of people not to let past your little stone fort. The earning of trust and respect is paramount for the conservative of course because he believes it is in man’s nature to seek conquest. Only in love is there an exception. However, even if consent is given, his love remains a sort of rape because it is love for him insofar as it is illimitable: the Zizekian love, the Platonic love of abstraction, the love of Tony Kushner’s Roy Cohn for the law. What can we call this sort of philia? Perhaps a chauvinist love—a trap I may well fall into myself by seeking out the highest love. Nevertheless a difference persists. Who you allow into the realm of intimacy—the realm of sovereign connection, where emotion is the primary rationality, and relationship is based on identity-as-genital/s, and expands out from there—reflects who you are as a person. In treating love as this holiest of exceptions, against which neither god nor God nor society can intrude, the conservative reveals his failure to love love.

It is easy to see how charity and duty are handily enough satisfied by the virtual, to the point of imbecilization. Love demands more. The best this mistrust of love itself can achieve is Rilke’s love between spouses, and even then, the conservative political project is underwritten by a belief that only one gender truly deserves their solitude.

The german idealist notion of the virtual/representational as the spiritual persists in our irony towards it, but it is false. The virtual is fun, but fun is the shallow end of a blunted spectrum. The other side is nausea. We watch these horrors, and while the horror is easily felt to be universal, it is absolutely essential to sort it out. Our virtual relation to the global, and therefore to each instance of the apocalypse, can go no deeper than fun or nausea as its absolute extremes. It is a horizontal abyss in which, as Baudrillard says, “only few things and at rare moments achieve pure appearance.” On this account, our love can walk the streets, perhaps even chant and hold our fists high, but only because the public has been eclipsed by the virtual. Every disaster has a gofundme by the end of 24 hours. The state’s response to climate change is implicit already in its response to each small calamity, each life boat on the Gulf or Mediterranean. It is already culpable in the displacement in the first place, as centuries of colonialism rot into wasteland. The apocalypse, as it is made to appear in the virtual, seduces us to stay comfortably lost between nausea and fun.

Love—political love, love that is a force in politics—is like chocolate. You ever see a kid eat chocolate candy for the first time? They didn’t know how empty and meaningless their life had been until that first rush of dopamine. Love is chocolate for the apocalypse. We can expanded our capacity to love such that the virtual horrors inspire something more than fun or nausea, not just sometimes, but as a way of relating to the world per se. Perhaps then we could see the biome and its torments as implicit in our decision to love on a day-to-day basis. You don’t know how good you can be until you’ve tasted it.

That expansion is something people actually already know how to do. And it is the practical life of spiritual development. Expansion of sensation and suspension of identity are not boxes on a spreadsheet, which can be supplanted for this-other-religious-belief, or that-other-political-commitment. Extending empathy is a skill you can actually improve, using your actual body. Actual bodies require labor. And if any of our actual bodies make it out to the other side of the apocalypse, they will not be drawn together by the ecstasy of the virtual, but by the necessity of the spiritual. There are hundreds of thousands of people who have already survived an apocalyptic visitation, and they have names, and if you live in a democracy, you can probably go meet them if you’d like.

You, Yer Dad, and Everyone You Know

One time at a party, I got trapped in the corner with some insufferable hippy like myself, and he made me listen to his spiel. He said, “According to the Buddha, if there are gods, or even, you know, big-G God, then that changes nothing. If they have an identity and a desire, they’ve got the same problems as you and I.” He smelled bad, but the lesson is a good one. Supposing this is true, it would remain true of any sort of hostile AI singularity event. On the Buddhist account, life is suffering, and compassion is the key to unlock what lies between ourselves and our enemies. If it suffers, then the humanity can love it. Well, so what? The machine doesn’t love me back, so who gives a shit? We are done with what Sloterdijk called “loser romanticism,” so this love had better actually do things. Because, if it doesn’t, we all have a lot of other emotions—hate, greed, boredom—that motivate whole industries.

Love is an essential political task now because so few people seem to be worthy of it. You, yer dad, and everyone you’ve ever loved is living on a planet that is dying, and the apathy with regard to that fact is galling. Even some of the brightest, most optimistic minds cleave to a sort of processual nihilism. “We’re doing everything we can!” said one friend. Another said, “If what it takes is some kind of horrible, overwhelming violence, or dictatorship, or both, to turn climate change around, maybe it was meant to happen. Maybe that’s the tragedy.” You can hear echoes of this in almost every response to climate change that isn’t coming from a tanky or a nazi. The religious find a different confidence. We need love, not just to have it, but to pursue it, magnify it, and seek within each instance the grain of a higher love. We need it because if we actually loved ourselves and our loved ones as much as we say we do, we would not need to scrunch down and hide when we look at the apocalypse. Love becomes a political force not by some fiat, some laser eye-beam of pure eros. Nor does it become a political force merely through solidarity with either our tight little chauvinist circle, or our cadre, or merely our fellow worker. Love becomes a political force when we seek with others to magnify the possibility of love, for ourselves, and for others.

The mystics may balk, but we as a society actually know a lot about how to produce that kind of love. Without the ability to form secure attachments as a toddler, that ability is hampered throughout life. Without the opportunity to play and make mistakes free of repudiation or humiliation as a child, our capacity for open play is hampered throughout life. Without the ability to assert oneself authentically as a young person, one’s ability to do so in relationships with lovers, friends, or family is perpetually hampered throughout life. Without the opportunity to give, receive, and reciprocate intimacy through the kinds of intense relationships that form as a young adult, our belief in solidarity, and ability to extend trust is damaged. These are essentially empirically sound facts gathered from a century of psychological science. And at each phase, the ability to form a higher love can be thwarted or nourished. Without stability, without assurances of health and well-being, and accompaniment, none of these capacities can thrive, and yield the fruit we crave. The love of hooks, the political love of the stranger—these are not given to us simply by our development as human creatures, but rather require practice, and the security in which to fail. So why don’t rich kids become rich people who love more? They hit about 21, form those intense relationships we all like to reminisce about, and get cock-slapped by patriarchy and capitalism. At some point, your dad says something amounting to “You’re letting a bunch of fuckin faeries steal all the weed outta yer garden! You dumb fuck. Stop feeling so much and get your shit together.” And somehow, they always do.

We can, in fact, observe empirically how lower forms of love grow to become higher, more secure, more generous, more certain forms of love in the individual lifespan. These transformations appears to be an individual choice one some level. We have to practice good communication to be any good at it. There is some genetic component, but it appears to be made negligible by the simple power of a present, loving face, warmth, and food at infancy. Yet under all of that is the value of labor. If the value of labor is high, parents spend more time with children, neighborhoods have more healthy activities in them as people naturally bridge their isolation with their free time—they may then neglect their children, as bell hooks says, by supplanting loving presence with material objects. Yet the fundament of material safety is necessary to develop our fullest capacity to love. Political love which is love of the leader or the country or the state is in fact simply chauvinism: loving what you see of yourself in the object (and is why romantic love can be a source of danger under the rule of any philosopher-king). But it does not ascend the level of loving difference, as Rilke’s true partners might. Instead, if we want a politics of love that is not chauvinist in nature, we have to begin at the moment of immediate experience, which is to say, praxis.

When was the last time you experienced a sudden, uncontrollable desire for the health, happiness, and joy of another? Have you sought to cultivate this capacity in yourself? What is stopping you from doing so? Why do you associate love, and especially the radiant quality of your own love, to be a liability for you? Was yer dad a cruel prick?

Angels in America ends with the characters having what is supposed to look like an ironically unwinnable conversation about theory and practice, and the necessity of both. Louis comments that he doesn’t want the play to have a Zionist tone, with its reference to the angel who would bring forth a new wellspring in the holy land. Kushner’s writing intones both a joy and a detachment with regard to theorizing: the only character who does it, really, is the sick-lover-abandoning Louis. Identifying the practice of love, and the magnification of love, with the daily experience of living and loving is not meant to subvert the divine. Divine love is no doubt something we are all capable of with the proper development, and besides, it radiates through us any way, whether we like it or not. Prior Walter, the AIDS-stricken prophet, has blessed you with more life. He wants you to thrive, like the bodhisattvas and the Christ. No one can take that away from you. But they can take away your polis. The massive chasm that separates love in its form as a political force from love as the force of creation itself is that political love must be willing to defend itself. If capital is an imminent force of calculability, then love emerges as its opposite, not because of its illimitability, but because of its refusal to supplant or replace or liquidate or substitute. Love cannot do without its particularities, given from each according to their ability, and seeking always for needs it can meet. Love in its chauvinist form is seductive for our political impulses because it promises to magnify our love for our neighbor by replacing him with someone we already love. Love in its political form—which is to say, love that respects the autonomy of self and other, while still seeking to overcome individual egoism—is the expansion of sensation and identity by means of cultivating this capacity in oneself, and guaranteeing the minimum social needs are met for your neighbors to cultivate it as well. You don’t need to bless the whole audience, you just need to bless more than the person you bless.

This is the love you must be in in order to survive the apocalypse. If a love that is so open-ended yet certain and specific; that is defined by its radiance, rather than its negation, or its qualities of exchange, cannot be willed into history, it will be willed out of it in retrospect by whatever comes next.

#lookingfornoonat2pm #slavoj zizek #bellhooks #hannah arendt #politics of love #apocalypse

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eldritchsurveys · 6 years

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1o4.

Do you prefer running or yoga? >> I don’t do either, but if I had to choose, I’d definitely choose yoga.

Do you prefer Zumba or pilates? >> I don’t know enough about either to choose.

What is your favorite time of day to run, if you’re a runner? >> I don’t run.

What is your favorite store to buy planners from? >> I don’t buy planners, I just use my phone / Google Calendar, if I must.

Are you jealous of anyone right now? >> Nah.

Do you like spicy food? >> I love spicy food.

Do you prefer Asian or Mexican food? >> Asian.

What continent would you most like to visit? >> Hmm... I guess Europe? Or Africa. Asia? I obviously can’t choose.

Have you ever played Truth or Dare at 3am? >> Nope.

Does your local library have a summer reading program? >> I think so.

Do you take selfies every day? >> Nah.

Who knows everything about you? >> Can Calah, I suppose. No single person in meatspace knows anything approaching “everything” about me.

What color is your sleeping bag? >> I don’t have one.

When was the last time you used a sleeping bag? >> A few years ago, when I went camping in Brooklyn.

What is your favorite sleepover game? >> ---

What was your favorite Bratz doll? >> I don’t have one.

What was your favorite American Girl doll? >> Kirsten, I think.

Did you have a Barbie doll with your hair color? >> Yeah.

Are you ok? >> I’m all right.

How many months until your next birthday? >> Nine.

Do you have a best friend? >> I do not.

If there’s someone you want to be best friends with, who is it? >> Nah. I think my original assessment is correct -- a best friend is something that’s developed over time, with investment from both parties, not something that’s just declared because I will it so. (I mean, if that works for another set of best friends, then by all means. It’s just not how it’s going to work for me.)

Who do you wish you were dating? >> I’m good, lmao.

Is there anyone you miss? >> Nah.

Who do you hate and wish were dead? >> No one.

Are you bothered by your past? >> Not so much bothered by it as irritated that this is the life I had to end up living -- or, rather, that these are the people I had to deal with. From family onward, it’s just been a string of poor social experiences (not to discredit the few good social experiences I’ve had, but you know how the human brain is with pattern recognition, especially negative patterns). I’m surprised I’m as levelheaded about it as I am at all, and I should really be easier on myself when I do get fed the fuck up about it.

Do you like drawing or painting better? >> Drawing.

What did you always want to do as a kid but were never allowed to do? >> Watch cartoons.

Can you run fast? >> I mean, probably.

Does your local library give out prizes for summer reading? >> I don’t know, but probably.

What is your favorite ice cream topping? >> Sprinkles or oreo crumbles.

Do you want to die? >> Not even a little bit.

Is your Bible falling apart? >> No, actually, my Bible is still quite new-looking because I haven’t read it, lmfao. I keep putting off my theological studies.

Have you ever wondered if someone was an alien? >> Not seriously.

Have you ever wondered if someone was an angel? >> Inworlders, yeah.

Have you ever been asked if you were an angel? >> I don’t think so.

Have you ever been asked if you were an alien? >> I mean, maybe.

How do you draw aliens? >> The standard grey-boy kind, with the head shaped like a guitar pick and the big almond eyes.

Do you doodle in the margins of your notebooks? >> I used to.

What color is your favorite knitted scarf? >> I don’t even remember what scarves I have, I haven’t seen them since the beginning of the year.

Do you need new boots this year? >> Yeah, I need combat boots.

Do you have Christmas lights up in your room? >> I do. A poor man’s fairy lights, I guess.

Has a crush ever been mean to you? >> ---

What states have you been to? >> New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, Colorado, Louisiana, Michigan, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Delaware, South Carolina. I’ve been through a lot more, but I don’t count that.

What states have you lived in? >> New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Colorado, North Carolina, Michigan.

What countries have you been to? >> Just this one.

Where would you most like to travel to? >> All the places.

Elephants or llamas? >> Elephants.

Does your heart hurt right now? >> No. I suppose it should, but we ain’t got time for that. Plus, I’m more angry than I am sad -- asshole moves piss me off. (Also, I’m mad as hell that a year after the Sigma situation, I ended up in a laughably similar position. But one thing I’m not is surprised, and not being surprised takes a lot of the sting out of the event. Catch me laughing about how ridiculous it was by September.)

What color is your bulletin board? >> I don’t have one. We have a whiteboard, though, and that’s exactly the colour you’d expect.

Are you hormones performing the way they are supposed to? >> Probably.

Which country’s flag is your favorite? >> I’m not sure, I never thought about it.

Are you part Irish? >> Nope.

What languages can you speak? >> Fluently? English.

Music or art? >> Music is art, so I’m gonna go ahead and choose art.

Cheetah print or plaid? >> Plaid.

Polka dots or paisleys? >> Paisley.

Have you ever been a witch for Halloween? >> Nope.

If you live in an apartment, is your landlord mean? >> Our rental office is staffed by pretty friendly people.

Who’s your favorite superhero? >> Doctor Strange. (Sorry, Anthony. You’re #2. :p)

Do you have a seashell collection? >> Nope.

Mermaids or dolphins? >> Hmm.

Who was your best friend in eighth grade? >> ---

Do you get bullied? >> Not now.

Do your parents love you? >> That seems doubtful.

Do you know what the Bible’s definition of religion is? >> I don’t. I wasn’t aware the Bible had an exact definition for religion (I know that the Bible defines how Christianity should be conducted, through Paul’s letters and whatnot, but that’s all I remember).

Do you feel alone? >> Actually, yeah, a lot of the time. We’re working on that.

What fashion essentials do you need that you don’t currently have right now? >> I’m not sure.

Do you normally wear jeans until they rip and wear out? >> I guess so.

What season’s colors do you look best in? >> ---

Do you want to start a business? >> Nah.

What did you go to college for? >> I didn’t.

Is abuse in your past? >> It is. Up to my very recent past, apparently.

Is there trauma in your past? >> There is.

Do you know anyone who’s been raped? >> Yeah.

How many tattoos do you have? >> Three.

Have you ever been rebellious? >> I was pretty much born rebellious.

Who do you look like? >> I don’t know, my family, I guess.

Are you a dog or cat person? >> Dog.

What do you hate? >> *shrug*?

#surveys #survey #random survey

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cutevirgo · 3 years

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almost posted a spicy christian denomination superiority joke that made myself laugh because i’m zooted and the petty historical shit was one of the most interesting parts of the forced daily theological classes and thought perhaps this is one for the draft file baby. but not this one :)

#p #order should go superiority > the american‘Christianity’ sects need more holy trinity & spirit > baby jesus (maybe) > how’s protestantism #trying to act like an equal when it’s 80 infighting raccoons in one trench-coat > but actually eastern ortho has got the bid for tree trunk #> catholics: could a lesser denomination steal all this stuff? colonize all this land? huh? wait no don’t look too close #if u can’t tell i was raised in a catholic education system. which was like a big system very tradition #but i didn’t do it! just this. somehow better?

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musicgoon · 4 years

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Walnut Commentary: Godly Gut Feelings with Pastor Hanley Liu

Listen to Walnut Commentary: Godly Gut Feelings with Pastor Hanley Liu. Available on YouTube, Spotify, or Podcasts.

About Hanley Liu

Hanley serves as the English Lead Pastor, where his primary responsibilities include preaching, leading, shepherding, counseling, and other aspects related to the English congregation. He is happily married to his bride Meryl and the two have one daughter.

Aside from family and ministry, Hanley’s greatest passions are running, reading, coffee, spicy foods, candy, Chargers football, Lakers basketball, and Dodgers baseball. He is a graduate of Biola University (B.A., 2003), Talbot School of Theology (M.Div, 2006), and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary (Doctor of Ministry, 2017).

In This Episode

Hanley and Aaron discuss why they did not podcast together for a while, Aaron critiques Hanley, Hanley changes his preaching style, and why they may or may not attend SOLA Conference 2020.

We also answer this listener question: "How do I discern if I should try a relationship that my gut is telling me to do in a godly manner?"

This episode was recorded before the death of Kobe Bryant. If you have a question to ask Pastor Hanley that you would like to hear us answer on the podcast, send us an email: [email protected].

Subscribe to FCBC Walnut on YouTube, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Find additional episodes on Facebook, and visit the Walnut Commentary archive.

#walnut commentary #podcast #asian american #christianity #church

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elissastillstands · 7 years

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With thanks to @frxstguardian, for making me confront some hard choices.

1) Coke or Pepsi? Coke. My Atlanta upbringing shows. 2) Disney or Dreamworks? Dreamworks. 3) Coffee or tea? Coffee 4) Books or movies? Books. Every once in a while bargain books go on sale for 50 cents apiece at the local bookstore, and I go wild every time. 5) Windows or Mac? I used to disparage Macs, but then I paid for one and used it for years, and now it's my child and I'm intensely protective of it. 6) D.C. or Marvel? Marvel, but not the Avengers franchise. More specifically, X-Men and parts of Netflix's Defenders. 7) Xbox or PlayStation? I was never a video game player. 8) Night owl or early riser? Hooo boy, night owl. 9) Cards or chess? Cards. 10) Chocolate or vanilla? Chocolate, the bitterer the better. Vanilla just isn't for me. 11) Vans or converse? Converse. 12) Fluff or angst? Why not both? With a smattering of philosophical and theological discussion on the side. 13) Beach or forest? Forest. 14) Dogs or cats? Neither - yes, yes, I don't like fluffy pets, I have no soul. 15) Clear skies or rain? Dramatic thunderstorms. 16) Cooking or eating out? I love cooking in theory and watch cooking shows for stress relief, but ramen and cart food, let's be real. 17) Spicy or mild food? As spicy as I can get it - I order all my food extra spicy and put extra chili sauce on everything. 18) Halloween/Samhain or Christmas/Yule? Halloween for sure, you get candy and excuse to wear costumes about in public. 19) Would you rather forever be a little too cold or a little too hot? A little too cold would be preferable. 20) If you could have a superpower what would it be? Mind control. 21) Animation or live action? Live action. 22) Bath or shower? Shower. 23) Team Cap or team Ironman? How about....neither. #JeanGreyDidn'tDieForThis #MagnetoWasRight 24) Fantasy or sci-fi? Fantasy, always. 25) Do you have 3 or 4 favourite quotes if so what are they? Okay, so all of these are super melodramatic, but I still adore them, and they're perfect for captioning super melodramatic art.

"I will be wild. I will be brutal. I will encircle you and conquer you. I will be more powerful than your boats and your swords and your blood lust. I will be inevitable." - Rachel Swirsky, "A Memory of Wind"

"Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood." - Zora Neale Hurston, "Their Eyes Were Watching God"

26) YouTube or Netflix? YouTube, hah. 27) Harry Potter or Percy Jackson? Hhnnnngghhh. I have a lot of Mixed Feelings about both of these series, and they both have foundational places in my childhood. At the end of the day, for reasons of characterization and quality of representation (if not necessarily for plot cohesion), I'll go with Percy Jackson. I feel a much stronger connection to the characters, and the modern adaptation of demigods is a fun one. Side note, am I the only one who ships Silena and Clarisse? ACHILLES AND PATROCLUS, ANYONE? 28) When do you feel accomplished? Whenever I actually finish drawing/writing something. 29) Star Wars or Star Trek? Star Wars. 30) Paperback books or hardcover books? Paperback books are more transportable. 31) Rock or pop music? Pop 32) What is the most important thing in your life? Getting through college? Discovering myself? Not getting hit by cars when I cross streets? 33) Mountains or sea/ocean? Mountains. 34) How do you express yourself? Some visual art, overly florid prose, yelling in dead languages. 35) What’s the first book/film that really counted to you? Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown was the book that started it all, back in the fourth grade. It was my first high fantasy and my first warrior woman story, and McKinley's prose is gloriously wry and clean and resonating and one of the first models of my own fictional writing. It was the book that introduced me to high fantasy, which is still one of the loves of my life. I've read it so many times that the paperback copy I got fell apart, and I had to hunt down a new copy. 36) What’s your element (air, water, etc.)? Fire 37) If you could travel anywhere, where would you go? Florence or Rome. I am so hyped for study abroad. 38) If you had any job in the world, what would it be? Realistically, I want to be a classics teacher, either in secondary or post-secondary education. I sometimes toy with the idea of being an archivist or translator for the Vatican, but A) I lack the skill, B) I'm nonreligious, and C) I aggressively blaspheme. 39) If you were granted three wishes, what would they be? Probably for enough money to live comfortably, independently from my family, and then to defer the other two wishes to someone else. 40) If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be? Duck or crispy pork on rice. 41) What is your dream companion animal? A winged snake. 42) Do you think there is life on other planets in universe? I think there has to be. 43) What’s your strangest childhood memory? For over a month, a friend and I pretended to be from the moons of Europa. 44) What is your perfect breakfast? Runny eggs, crispy bacon, and some nice crusty bread. 45) What was the last movie you watched? Lars Von Trier's Medea and Pier Pasolini's Medea, for my classics in film class. They were both interesting, in very different ways.

#L's stuff #I would have so much fun wreaking havoc in the vatican #Aerin Fire-Hair Dragon-Killer will ALWAYS be in my heart #Achilles and Patroclus just necessitates a ship #Like damn when I looked back on it and realized what uncle rick had done #I was so impressed #also Reyna is QUEENLY #Iron Fist is going to ruin Defenders

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mastcomm · 4 years

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‘There Are Too Many Minefields’: Readers on Swiping and Dating in the Trump Era

At a time when politics have become so intensely personal and divisive, how are people navigating the topic in the already fraught world of online dating?

With President Trump’s impeachment trial underway, and the race for the Democratic presidential nomination picking up, we asked readers who use online dating what they look for politically in a potential match and how they signal their own views.

More than 200 people responded, many echoing the sentiments of one woman who had been open to dating people with different political views but who changed her mind in the current climate. “Now, your political beliefs are a referendum on your entire life, with all your values aligned neatly under a single label,” Kristine Kinsey of Knoxville, Tenn., wrote.

While some said they didn’t think politics was important in the dating calculus, far more thought the subject was crucial in evaluating possible partners, often sleuthing for subtle profile clues that might indicate their values.

Here is a selection of the responses, which have been lightly edited.

Taking an upfront approach

Image

Credit…David Tulanian

I don’t really make a conscious effort to either screen people out or in based on their political beliefs. What I have found, sadly, is people boldly announcing, “No Trump-Republicans need apply.”

I like to keep an open mind, so I don’t want to avoid a whole group of people who may not share all my politics.

Before, I would never dream of informing everyone about my politics. But as time goes on, I’m starting to declare that I support Trump! — David Tulanian, 59, Las Vegas

•

All of my bios specifically state something like “No Republicans,” “No Trump supporters” or even, “If you don’t care about politics, I don’t care about you.”

I’ve also been known to send the first message to all of my matches asking if they’re Republican.

This has produced some memorable conversations with offended conservatives and also gotten me some dates with like-minded swipers. — Alyssa Parssinen, 33, Manchester, N.H.

•

I just come right out and say I’m progressive politically and that I’m an atheist. These things are too important to leave out.

At least one conservative and one middle-of-the-road guy have argued with me that I’m not being open-minded, and aren’t liberals supposed to be open-minded? — Susan K. Perry, 73, Los Angeles

Deciding what not to say on your profile

I think I might prefer to date someone with different political ideologies.

I intentionally leave off my conservative affiliation because I live in New York. I’m having a hard time getting matches online as it is.

There are people of good and bad character across the political spectrum. If we start segregating ourselves romantically based on politics, well, that’s not going to help society get to a better place, is it? — Curtis Chou, 27, New York

•

I’m an evangelical Christian. I leave that off the profile because there are too many minefields that can get triggered if that stuff is in a profile.

Disagreements on all individual issues are fine with me. I’ve been close to people who don’t trust government to do away with gun violence. I’ve dated women who believe abortion is murder. I’ve been close to girls who think immigration is too high.

But say the “T” word and I’m out, without explanation, without exception, without the slightest deliberation. — Winston Steward, 48, Los Angeles

Branching out

We were getting cozy on the couch, and I can’t remember why now, but I said, “Wait a second, you didn’t vote for Trump, did you?”

And he said, “Um, I was in the military and I grew up in the South.”

And I was like, whoa. WHAT THE [expletive]?!?! It totally turned the night on its head.

But we got past it and had a pretty decent open conversation about it a couple of days later when he took me to a diner where every TV (and there were a lot of them) was tuned to Fox News. — Christina Galante, 47, Long Island

•

I went out on a limb with a guy who said he was “Christian,” which I would never normally swipe “yes” on. He described his beliefs as “I don’t necessarily believe in a God. I don’t believe in heaven.” With my strong understanding of Christian beliefs, I knew he wasn’t really a Christian. So we went out.

And now we’re official and have fun theological conversations that I never expected! — Laurel Westendorf, 32, Bend, Ore.

•

The few times I tried to talk to someone conservative it ended in an argument.

One guy basically told me he didn’t care if people’s rights were being taken away because his 401(k) was amazing. Also another guy argued that global warming was not real and created so scientists could make money.

While I was very hesitant online to match with someone who voted for Trump, I did end up meeting my current boyfriend through friends and he did vote for Trump but will not do so again. We don’t agree on many things politically, which can be challenging, but we are able to have good discussions and challenge each other. — Heather MacLachlan, 31, Lakewood, Ohio

When Trump enters the equation

In the past, I was more open to dating a conservative Republican. In the age of Trump, though, I’ve learned it’s best not to go there. We simply aggravate each other, and that’s no way to start a relationship.

I’ve had several conservative men tell me that they like dating a liberal woman, that they think it’s “spicy” and “exciting.”

I am no man’s hot sauce, that’s for sure! — Felicia Lowery, 58, Tucson

•

I am a conservative Trump supporter, BUT I value hearing other opinions. If a poster (on Tinder) says “Trump supporters swipe left,” I swipe left because that is a close-minded person.

I value dialogue and learning from others and having others learn from my views. My views are firm, but subject to change by learning! — Kamal Hamid, 58, Denver

•

At 20, I dated the man who would become my husband (and later, my ex-husband), knowing he was a Republican.

In the early ’90s, the world was less polarized and politics still seemed at least a little noble, so you could respect a different perspective and even sleep with it.

Now, your political beliefs are a referendum on your entire life with all your values aligned neatly under a single label.

My ex was a liberal by the time I married him, but 20 years later, I made sure my next partners were already my flavor, politically. — Kristine Kinsey, 49, Knoxville, Tenn.

•

I’d date someone indifferent, but I couldn’t date someone who supports impeachment.

Politics is not actually that important, but it’s a fun topic. — Peter Gormley, 24, New York City

•

Image

Credit…Megan Reilley

I try to be open-minded, but the fact is, a vote for Trump means a vote against my family.

I have a trans kid and I won’t spend time talking to or meeting someone who either doesn’t believe in human rights for everyone or doesn’t think about the far-reaching implications of their vote.

I need to keep my kid safe, which means I screen potential dates. I signal my values by stating simply that I am not conservative in any way.

Surprisingly, many men interpret this as a reference to my sexual predilection. — Megan Reilley, 47, Hagerstown, Md.

Leaving politics out

I don’t screen dates on their political beliefs. I don’t knowingly signal my beliefs.

A person’s politics when dating is a three out of 10 on importance, where a 10 out of 10 is very important. — Thomas Liquet, 28, the Bronx

•

I find politics interesting, but it’s just not something I find fun.

While I probably would consider myself fairly liberal, I don’t give any indication of that on my profile because, frankly, I’m not interested in dating someone who would form their opinion of me based on that (for better or for worse). — Jonathan Pascale, 25, Houston

Lara Takenaga contributed reporting.

A note to readers who are not subscribers: This article from the Reader Center does not count toward your monthly free article limit.

Follow the @ReaderCenter on Twitter for more coverage highlighting your perspectives and experiences and for insight into how we work.

from WordPress https://mastcomm.com/life-style/there-are-too-many-minefields-readers-on-swiping-and-dating-in-the-trump-era/

#Life style

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eathealthylivefree · 4 years

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Healthy Instant Pot Soup and Stew Recipes

Healthy Instant Pot Soup and Stew Recipes is a collection you will want to refer to when you’re craving comfort food. I love using pressure cooking to make soups and stews. Whether you have a stove-top pressure cooker or Instant Pot, these soups and stews can be made in a fraction of the time if would take using a regular pot.

Recently, I gave an Instant Pot to one of my son’s best friends. This friend has been a mentor for my son since his freshman year at Princeton. Last week, my son started the Master of Divinity program at Princeton Theological Seminary, the same program as his mentor. I am so grateful this young man has taken my son under his wing. His friendship, and his loving and generous heart shown towards my son are a rare find.

This friend and his wife love soups and stews, perfect for making in an Instant Pot. So, I reached out to my blogger friends to come up with some healthy Instant Pot soup and stew recipes to get this young couple started.

Healthy Instant Pot Soup Recipes

Vegetarian Instant Pot Soups

Instant Pot Cuban Black Bean Soup – Jeanette’s Healthy Living

Instant Pot Moroccan Carrot Red Lentil Soup – A Cedar Spoon

Instant Pot Irish Potato Kale Soup – Letty’s Kitchen

Instant Pot Creamy Tomato Soup with Crispy Parmesan Chickpeas – Peas and Crayons

Vegetarian Lentil Tortilla Soup – Peas and Crayons

Instant Pot Vegan Golden Lentil & Spinach Soup – Kitchen Treaty

Instant Pot Hot and Sour Soup – Sweet and Savory Meals

Instant Pot Low-Carb Loaded Cauliflower Soup – Kalyn’s Kitchen

Instant Pot Soups with Chicken/Meat

Instant Pot Homemade Chicken Soup – Jeanette’s Healthy Living

Instant Pot Chicken Noodle Soup – Kristine’s Kitchen

Instant Pot Lebanese Chicken Soup – The Lemon Bowl

Carrot and Ginger Soup with Chicken and Spinach (Paleo) – Tasting Page

Instant Pot Chicken Fajita Soup – All Day I Dream About Food

Instant Pot Chicken Taco Soup – Julies Eats and Treats

Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup – A Cedar Spoon

Instant Pot Chicken Tortilla Soup – Kristine’s Kitchen

Low Carb Buffalo Chicken Soup – Wholesome Yum

Cabbage Soup with Ground Beef – Wholesome Yum

Moroccan Instant Pot Hearty Vegetable Beef Soup – Food Faith Fitness

Low Carb Instant Pot Sausage and Kale Soup – Homemade Interest

Instant Pot Ham and Bean Soup – Sweet and Savory Meals

Instant Pot Low-Carb Ham and Cabbage Soup – Kalyn’s Kitchen

Coconut Curry Sea Bass in the Instant Pot – Tasting Page

Healthy Instant Pot Stew Recipes

Vegetarian Instant Pot Stews

Instant Pot Three Chile Dal – Jeanette’s Healthy Living

Instant Pot Lentil Chili – Jeanette’s Healthy Living

Instant Pot Vegan Lentil Chili – Delish Knowledge

Instant Pot Spicy White Bean and Chard Stew – Flavor The Moments

Plant Based Instant Pot White Beans with Tomatillos and Poblanos – Plant Based Instant Pot

Instant Pot Caballero Bean and Soy Curl Chili – Plant Based Instant Pot

Instant Pot Stews with Chicken/Meat/Seafood

Instant Pot Japanese Chicken Curry – Jeanette’s Healthy Living

Instant Pot Chicken and Dumplings For Two – Dessert for Two

No Bean Whole 30 Keto Chili – Food Faith Fitness

Coconut Curry Sea Bass in the Instant Pot – Tasting Page

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