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#to understand the basis of the criticism

gothhabiba · 1 year

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there's this tendency amongst white people to, when criticised for colonialist or otherwise racist logic, explain what they meant, as though the criticism arises from a misunderstanding caused by the ignorance of the critic. and I gotta say. assuming ignorance on the part of a person of colour is not helping you beat the racism allegations.

#I mean a person of colour is just as capable of not knowing a fact or of misinterpreting something as anyone else lol #but I'm talking about cases where it was not a misunderstanding but the white person in question has merely failed or refused #to understand the basis of the criticism #bonus points if the 'explanation' in question must be a lie because it would make what they said meaningless or incoherent #metablogging #racism

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wolves-in-the-world · 2 months

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the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a somewhat emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far, and some of us never stood a fucking chance.

#eliot #eliot spencer #orig #further discussion in further tags #I'm being perhaps a little critical and there are other ways to read eg the fragile masculinity moments #but I Do think they were intended this way and largely come across this way #I'm quite happy playing with a fanon eliot who's better at this shit is the thing? it feels faithful enough to the original.#but this is something I'm chewing over in a rewatch and it's interesting so far #the fact that he pretty consistently respects women doesn't stop him from treating men and women differently y'know?#the fact that his bantering with hardison expresses affection and gets quite soft over time #doesn't stop him from pushing hardison away on a semi-regular basis. often physically.#the fact that the fandom unanimously decided he's an utter gentleman in matters of dating #doesn't quite negate the time he physically stopped aimee from getting away when he wanted to talk to her #though that's one I might disregard because it's so early and I think they hadn't quite figured out the characters then #and it was admittedly a brief moment followed by very consensual happenings #perhaps. honestly. eliot may be reflecting the attitudes of the show here.#which were very progressive for the time and are still startling on several fronts now but also showing definite signs of age #arguably fanon eliot (as I understand him) is eliot adjusted for inflation. as it were.#there's a lot going on here I'm having a normal amount of thoughts about it I'm. stopping now

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nostomannia · 6 months

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tell me what the worst takes for my muse would be if they were a canon character. || @sweet-chimera

// worst takes if they were a canon-- you know how we have the once cest and sanscest? That bs-- that but sols own selves inside their body-- they would be a magnet for aus. Some good-- some not, all weird when people start shipping them with herself

OH NO not the selfcest. I hate that it could easily be a thing, I've made jokes about it in the past, but it's just.

Selfcest.

Why. I love the idea of alternate versions til they turn into wholly new things, that's fun! But why ship them together?

#Fawn Speaks || OOC #Just on the basis of i hate ships involving incest or selfcest this is definitely the Worst take #but also a critical failure of understanding Solita's self loathing to the point of if she ever did see a living alternate of herself #her vision would go red. Someone is dying. Brutally.

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lettersfromthelevant · 1 year

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i swear, every pride month, i end up unfollowing like close to a dozen people--including mutuals--because everyone just gets completely politically unhinged and horrible. either it is aphobia, misogyny, or antisemitism, but soooo many people just go off the rails with it. i dunno what it is about this month, but where i used to look forward to it, i've begun to absolutely dread it.

i used to love pride online because irl pride is so hostile to jews (it isn't that much better here, tbh) and i could at least participate here, but where it used to be mostly sane, it has quickly spiraled into homophobia/biphobia/aphobia, misogyny, and exploitative regressive politics where the entire point of pride is sidelined to appeal to some fucked up groups that this website loves propping up as mascots. no one on here seems capable of being normal about forgotten marginalized groups, like women, aces, and jews. it even has a lead up sometimes; the lead up this year felt like pms, my dash has been so bad the past couple weeks and today the floodgates opened. i haven't seen this much unmasked misogyny and aphobia in a long time and it is only day one. this year is gonna suck, i can just feel it.

all this to say, if i end up unfollowing you and you're a mutual, it isn't personal. i'm just getting close to my wits end

#lucky.txt #as much as i dislike the community i used to be a part of on here i never realized how much i took for granted not having to see the #brain dead and/or fucked up perverted politics of mainstream tumblr all over my dash on a daily basis. like before if i saw something #stupid i could be confident that the ten comments under the op would be saying exactly what i was thinking: ''this is dumb and wrong.''#now the ten comments under the op make me want to throw my laptop through a wall. my 'j' key doesn't even have a j on it anymore.#that is how many times i have *slammed* my finger on that button to get the atrocious things i see on this dash out of my sight as #quickly as humanly possible. i have never rolled my eyes so much in my entire life than i have in the past year on this blog. the utter #lack of critical thinking skills on mainstream tumblr is ridiculous. this website has somehow convinced people of problems #that literally do not exist irl while simultaneously denying real life oppression as being ''chronically online.'' if you make any kind of #response criticizing mainstream opinions on here you will be slapped as a 'puritan' a 'fascist' or whatever other word of the day #that is used for minorities who don't like having their rights and dignities infringed on by entitled leftists. if it weren't for the simpl #fact that i would instantly be barred from like 2/3rds of tumblr i would just go back to the old community and grit my teeth through #the bad parts. it is deeply concerning just how far gone and detached from reality so many of you are. i've said it before but #i'll say it again: i literally will never understand how this website was dubbed the ''gay feminist'' site when it is so horrifically #misogynistic and homophobic even during pride month and women's month

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butterscotch-brigade · 1 year

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when will ppl learn that theres a difference between a plothole/story thread that was left unresolved bc the writer forgot and a question/story thread that was deliberately left open ended bc stories are not obligated to spell everything out all the time and it actually makes more narrative sense within the context to leave some things unanswered

#vanilla talks #and before anyone gets on my case: yes it IS possible to do the latter poorly #or to handwave a case of the former as ACTUALLY being the latter to get away w shitty writing #but u need to understand the quality of the work ur reading/the author's intentions #bc its a case by case basis #and im sick of seeing ppl confuse one for the other #if ur gonna do literary/media analysis PLEASE at least show u understand what complexity rly is #u cant be critical of smth if u have no critical thinking skills

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tenteen · 2 years

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if youre mad about david tennant being cast or are delusional enough tk think that david tennant is maliciously trying to overshadow Ncuti’s era, watch this video. and try and tell me that this is coming fron anywhere but a place of love for doctor who.

youtube

They literally just want us to enjoy this and if you’re not into it, thats fine! It just is not so serious or sinister. There are many conversations to be had about this and criticism to be made! But I just think that it’s incredibly unfair to let this emerging narrative about them “taking away from” or “disrespecting” Ncuti continue.

Some other things to consider is that 1. Ncuti was/is literally busy with other projects NOW bc he’s in the Greta Gerwig Barbie movie & Sex Education S4, 2. We have no idea the in universe reason or explanation for this will be or how it will play out!!!!! Ncuti was/could be in the ENTIRE episode. it honestly could even be a fakeout for all we know!

#this is my official opinion. i understand why there sre lots of critical conversations rn #but i think that on the basis of just david tennant is out to get Gatwa #is just depressing and ridiculous #Youtube

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prokopetz · 9 months

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The reason most people are bad at offering cogent criticisms of other people's work is because they're evaluating those works on the basis of The Thing They Would Make, not The Thing You Would Make. Indeed, a great many people don't understand that those are different things, interpreting The Thing You Would Make as a defective or incomplete version of The Thing They Would Make.

This gulf of understanding is not an impassable one. Learning to correctly identify the author's creative goals with respect to a particular work, and to formulate criticism in terms of how best to achieve those goals, is a skill which can be cultivated. In its proper place, it can be a hugely valuable skill – there's a reason many authors will tell you that a good editor is worth their weight in gold.

Unfortunately, developing this skill will not make you any less prone to being a hater. Learning how to correctly identify other people's creative goals simply means that you'll graduate from picking at specific choices to saying: "I understand this work's goals, and those goals fucking suck. I hate everything that this chooses to be."

#media #criticism #media criticism #editing #swearing

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mayasaura · 11 days

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did you see te pati maori declared independence??

I DID NOT! Holy shit! Thanks for the news!

Okay, now reporting back from one research deep-dive, the recent context as I understand it is this:

Last November, a conservative right-wing Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, assumed office. He's got a lot of less than stellar right-wing policies, and that includes making cuts to the Ministry of Social Development and opposing co-governance with the Waitangi Tribunal and other Māori leadership organisations over the administering of public services such as education, health, and infrastructure. He's been openly critical of Māori seats in Parliament, though he hasn't (yet) opposed them. Over the course of his administration, there's been an initiative to omit or cut mentions of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundational document of New Zealand that forms the basis of arguments for Māori protections, from official language.

Which brings us to yesterday, May 30th. Budget Day. The day the new administration would announce their first budget and a day of mass action for supporters of te Pāti Māori protesting the treatment of Māori under the new government. I don't have any concrete numbers, but RNZ reports thousands of protestors, while the NZ Herald estimates "tens of thousands" turning out nation-wide, and a walking protest that delayed rush-hour traffic in Auckland for hours.

You may have already guessed that the budget was Bad. As I understand it, the budget effectively cut any kind of targeted funding for Māori health or education, and decreased funding for Māori cultural festivals and celebrations. And again, I cannot stress enough how much I am not an expert on this topic, so there's probably a lot more in there I don't know about.

In response to the new budget, Māori Party MP Rawiri Waititi issued a Declaration of Independence to the New Zealand Parliament, (video of his speech in link) with the support of his fellow te Pāti Māori co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer.

There doesn't seem to be any concrete plan in place yet for the organisation of the new Māori parliament, but MPs Waititi and Ngarewa-Packer met with protestors to collect signatures for the Declaration, which they plan to bring to a hui taumata (meeting of congress) today, Friday, May 31st. The text of the Declaration can be found on te Pāti Māori website, in the form of a petition. You do not have to be Māori to sign, but I believe you do have to be kiwi.

#damn this is exciting!!#I'm sure I don't understand the full context of what's happening right now #maybe the party is determined to see this through #maybe it's a show of Māori political power intended to force the coalition government out of its conservative nose-dive #I don't fucking know!!#but I am very hopeful and excited to see what kind of future te Pāti Māori intends for Aotearoa #fucking power move #indigenous rights #politics #Māori

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fozmeadows · 2 years

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tools not rules: the importance of critical thinking

More than once, I’ve talked about the negative implications of Evangelical/purity culture logic being uncritically replicated in fandom spaces and left-wing discourse, and have also referenced specific examples of logical overlap this produces re, in particular, the policing of sexuality. What I don’t think I’ve done before is explain how this happens: how even a well-intentioned person who’s trying to unlearn the toxic systems they grew up with can end up replicating those systems. Even if you didn’t grow up specifically in an Evangelical/purity context, if your home, school, work and/or other social environments have never encouraged or taught you to think critically, then it’s easy to fall into similar traps - so here, hopefully, is a quick explainer on how that works, and (hopefully) how to avoid it in the future.

Put simply: within Evangelism, purity culture and other strict, hierarchical social contexts, an enormous value is placed on rules, and specifically hard rules. There might be a little wiggle-room in some instances, but overwhelmingly, the rules are fixed: once you get taught that something is bad, you’re expected never to question it. Understanding the rules is secondary to obeying them, and oftentimes, asking for a more thorough explanation - no matter how innocently, even if all you’re trying to do is learn - is framed as challenging those rules, and therefore cast as disobedience. And where obedience is a virtue, disobedience is a sin. If someone breaks the rules, it doesn’t matter why they did it, only that they did. Their explanations or justifications don’t matter, and nor does the context: a rule is a rule, and rulebreakers are Bad.

In this kind of environment, therefore, you absorb three main lessons: one, to obey a rule from the moment you learn it; two, that it’s more important to follow the rules than to understand them; and three, that enforcing the rules means castigating anyone who breaks them. And these lessons go deep: they’re hard to unlearn, especially when you grow up with them through your formative years, because the consequences of breaking them - or even being seen to break them - can be socially catastrophic.

But outside these sorts of strict environments - and, honestly, even within them - that much rigidity isn’t healthy. Life is frequently far more complex and nuanced than hard rules really allow for, particularly when it comes to human psychology and behaviour - and this is where critical thinking comes in. Critical thinking allows us to evaluate the world around us on an ongoing basis: to weigh the merits of different positions; to challenge established rules if we feel they no longer serve us; to decide which new ones to institute in their place; to acknowledge that sometimes, there are no easy answers; to show the working behind our positions, and to assess the logic with which other arguments are presented to us. Critical thinking is how we graduate from a simplistic, black-and-white view of morality to a more nuanced perception of the world - but this is a very hard lesson to learn if, instead of critical thinking, we’re taught instead to put our faith in rules alone.

So: what does it actually look like, when rule-based logic is applied in left-wing spaces? I’ll give you an example:

Sally is new to both social justice and fandom. She grew up in a household that punished her for asking questions, and where she was expected to unquestioningly follow specific hard rules. Now, though, Sally has started to learn a bit more about the world outside her immediate bubble, and is realising not only that the rules she grew up with were toxic, but that she’s absorbed a lot of biases she doesn’t want to have. Sally is keen to improve herself. She wants to be a good person! So Sally joins some internet communities and starts to read up on things. Sally is well-intentioned, but she’s also never learned how to evaluate information before, and she’s certainly never had to consider that two contrasting opinions could be equally valid - how could she have, when she wasn’t allowed to ask questions, and when she was always told there was a singular Right Answer to everything? Her whole framework for learning is to Look For The Rules And Follow Them, and now that she’s learned the old rules were Bad, that means she has to figure out what the Good Rules are.

Sally isn’t aware she’s thinking of it in these terms, but subconsciously, this is how she’s learned to think. So when Sally reads a post explaining how sex work and pornography are inherently misogynistic and demeaning to women, Sally doesn’t consider this as one side of an ongoing argument, but uncritically absorbs this information as a new Rule. She reads about how it’s always bad and appropriative for someone from one culture to wear clothes from another culture, and even though she’s not quite sure of all the ways in which it applies, this becomes a Rule, too. Whatever argument she encounters first that seems reasonable becomes a Rule, and once she has the Rules, there’s no need to challenge them or research them or flesh out her understanding, because that’s never been how Rules work - and because she’s grown up in a context where the foremost way to show that you’re aware of and obeying the Rules is to shame people for breaking them, even though she’s not well-versed in these subjects, Sally begins to weigh in on debates by harshly disagreeing with anyone who offers up counter-opinions. Sometimes her disagreements are couched in borrowed terms, parroting back the logic of the Rules she’s learned, but other times, they’re simply ad hominem attacks, because at home, breaking a Rule makes you a bad person, and as such, Sally has never learned to differentiate between attacking the idea and attacking the person.

And of course, because Sally doesn’t understand the Rules in-depth, it’s harder to explain them to or debate with rulebreakers who’ve come armed with arguments she hasn’t heard before, which makes it easier and less frustrating to just insult them and point out that they ARE rulebreakers - especially if she doesn’t want to admit her confusion or the limitations of her knowledge. Most crucially of all, Sally doesn’t have a viable framework for admitting to fault or ignorance beyond a total groveling apology that doubles as a concession to having been Morally Bad, because that’s what it’s always meant to her to admit you broke a Rule. She has no template for saying, “huh, I hadn’t considered that,” or “I don’t know enough to contribute here,” or even “I was wrong; thanks for explaining!”

So instead, when challenged, Sally remains defensive: she feels guilty about the prospect of being Bad, because she absolutely doesn’t want to be a Bad Person, but she also doesn’t know how to conceptualise goodness outside of obedience. It makes her nervous and unsettled to think that strangers could think of her as a Bad Person when she’s following the Rules, and so she becomes even more aggressive when challenged to compensate, clinging all the more tightly to anyone who agrees with her, yet inevitably ending up hurt when it turns out this person or that who she thought agreed on What The Rules Were suddenly develops a different opinion, or asks a question, or does something else unsettling.

Pushed to this sort of breaking point, some people in Sally’s position go back to the fundamentalism they were raised with, not because they still agree with it, but because the lack of uniform agreement about What The Rules Are makes them feel constantly anxious and attacked, and at least before, they knew how to behave to ensure that everyone around them knew they were Good. Others turn to increasingly niche communities and social groups, constantly on paranoid alert for Deviance From The Rules. But other people eventually have the freeing realisation that the fixation on Rules and Goodness is what’s hurting them, not strangers with different opinions, and they steadily start to do what they wanted to do all along: become happier, kinder and better-informed people who can admit to human failings - including their own - without melting down about it.

THIS is what we mean when we talk about puritan logic being present in fandom and left-wing spaces: the refusal to engage with critical thinking while sticking doggedly to a single, fixed interpretation of How To Be Good. It’s not always about sexuality; it’s just that sexuality, and especially queerness, are topics we’re used to seeing conservatives talk about a certain way, and when those same rhetorical tricks show up in our fandom spaces, we know why they look familiar.

So: how do you break out of rule-based thinking? By being aware of it as a behavioural pattern. By making a conscious effort to accept that differing perspectives can sometimes have equal value, or that, even if a given argument isn’t completely sound, it might still contain a nugget of truth. By trying to be less reactive and more reflective when encountering positions different to your own. By accepting that not every argument is automatically tied to or indicative of a higher moral position: sometimes, we’re just talking about stuff! By remembering that you’re allowed to change your position, or challenge someone else’s, or ask for clarification. By understanding that having a moral code and personal principles isn’t at odds with asking questions, and that it’s possible - even desirable - to update your beliefs when you come to learn more than you did before.

This can be a scary and disquieting process to engage in, and it’s important to be aware of that, because one of the main appeals of rule-based thinking - if not the key appeal - is the comfort of moral certainty it engenders. If the rules are simple and clear, and following them is what makes you a good person, then it’s easy to know if you’re doing the right thing according to that system. It’s much, much harder and frequently more uncomfortable to be uncertain about things: to doubt, not only yourself, but the way you’ve been taught to think. And especially online, where we encounter so many more opinions and people than we might elsewhere, and where we can get dogpiled on by strangers or go viral without meaning to despite our best intentions? The prospect of being deemed Bad is genuinely terrifying. Of course we want to follow the Rules. But that’s the point of critical thinking: to try and understand that rules exist in the first place, not to be immutable and unchanging, but as tools to help us be better - and if a tool becomes defunct or broken, it only makes sense to repair it.

Rigid thinking teaches us to view the world through the lens of rules: to obey first and understand later. Critical thinking teaches us to use ideas, questions, contexts and other bits of information as analytic tools: to put understanding ahead of obedience. So if you want to break out of puritan thinking, whenever you encounter a new piece of information, ask yourself: are you absorbing it as a rule, or as a tool?

#critical thinking #logic #rhetoric #purity culture #fandom #evangelism #hierarchy #thinking

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harmoonix · 4 months

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The sunset's flower🏵️

(Natal Astrology Mini - Observations)

🌴 - Sagittarius and Pisces Moon or Venus are able to find abundance in love since they have Jupiter as their ruler for relationships (9th house is also the house of abundance)

🌴 - Jupiter conjunct moon > people get attached to you easily because you often tend to share your nurturing/kind energy

🌴 - Gemini Moons can be shy if the moon makes an aspect with Saturn or Pluto

🌴 - The Unhealed Virgo Placements tends to criticize a lot, or be judgemental that's why is very important to try to understand the surface of a situation (No hate to Virgo Placements)

🌴 - Mercury in the 5th/8th house makes the native to be communicative towards their love/sex life

🌴 - Earth or Water Sign in the 2nd house makes you to crave food in unexpected moments especially at night

🌴 - Uranus or Neptune in the 6th/9th house makes the native to be attracted towards astrology or astronomy

🌴 - Neptune aspecting the south node in harsh aspects can indicate that the native was not spiritual or intuitive in a past life

🌴 - South Node harshly aspecting Moon or Saturn can indicate that native may have lived a painful past life, I swear I was reading about south node and moon aspects on a site this was the first thing that popped out

🌴 - Sun or Lilith (h12) in the 6th house may like to to surround themselves with animals or their own pets on a daily basis

🌴 - Jupiter in the 8th house can be sexually abundent in this life or having luck at getting sexually satisfied (No hookup culture allowed!!)

🌴 - Mercury in Sagittarius or Mercury in the 9th house can talk more than 1 language, or to be interested in learning other languages

🌴 - Neptune in the 2nd house can at some extend indicate eating lots unhealthy food sometimes Saturn/Pluto in the 2H too!!

🌴 - Mars is in the most happiest place, in Capricorn during this time, if you feel like you're more confident than general around this time (even more sexual) this can be why!!

🌴 - Why do people with Mercury in Capricorn Degrees 10°, 22° have such hot and intimidating voices?? Like let me transform in Ursula for a bit✋

🌴 - Your life is a rollercoaster in relationships when you have Moon or Sun rulling your 7th house!💀/😍(not in a bad way)

🌴 - Venus in Scorpio/Venus in the 8th house can have a hard time with letting themselves to be in a relationship or not. And omg stay away from those posesive people for your own good

🌴 - Chiron in the 1st house is a very vital placement for healing overall and everywhere in your body/soul/mind/heart/organism/everything!

🌴 - When you have Neptune in your 1st house one thing about this placement is that unfortunately sometimes people project themselves into you or their insecurities

🌴 - When you have Uranus in the 5th house pregnancy can come unexpected or Aquarius in the 5th house (Don't be scared about it this is just in CASE you want kids and the pregnancy can come off as a "surprise bish😍"

🌴 - Leo/Aries/Scorpio and Capricorn in the 7th house have a chance to get an dominant partner in the relationship due to them having powerful planets as rulers for their 7th house

🌴 - Neptune aspecting Jupiter > You can't lie to me that these natives are not spiritually blessed by their spiritual guides...they're so loved

🌴 - Mars aspecting the Midhaven or Mars in the 10th house can make you to gain money fast or to attract money 🤑 MATERIAL GWORL

🌴 - Chiron square/opposite/conjunct/quincunx Square North, omg I can make an entire roman about these aspects, cus I have them too 💔, saurr...For what I have read and studied about this placement, it can indicate pain/suffering from a past life and something you couldn't heal or finish in a past life, it makes me to think at those statues crying with blood tears if you know what I mean guys,but with all of those I genuinely think that we have the chance to heal this issue in this lifetime guys!

!!🌴 I have tried to keep it simple and to not make a long description for every observation but sometimes is hard since I made these long observation since a long time!! Anyway guys hope you have it good!! All the best for you!!🌴

H a r m o o n i x 🌴🏵️🌴

#astrology #astro observations #birth chart #astro notes #astrology observations #placements #astro community #horoscope #ascendant #mini astro observations #venus #observations #astro.seek #astro.com #astro.blog #astro blog

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maxknightley · 5 months

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on the one hand I do understand where people are coming from when they respond to The White American Desire For Authentic Culture by going "you already have a culture" and pointing out that this desire often has reactionary undertones

that being said, I think it's largely sidestepping the actual issue, which is that American culture fucking blows chunks. American culture is strip malls and military worship and the elevation of mass-market pablum to Bold Artistic Statements.

and subculture is only partially an escape from this, because most subcultures exist within the same constraints of American culture as a whole; they are captured and redefined by capital on such a frequent basis that it often feels impossible to hold onto them in any meaningful way.

moreover, even the parts of American culture that aren't complete garbage are more or less inextricable from the colonial, imperialist, and racially-stratified history of the country. like, I think of that post that went around a while ago talking about "America sucks but has some good parts," and one of the things it listed was national parks, and people (rightfully!) pointed out that the national park system is fundamentally flawed and tends to shit on indigenous nations by design.

the only thing I can think of that's even sort of an exception is pop culture - jazz and rock music, superhero comics, Hollywood. and all of those are, again, captured and defined by capital, and in one way or another have historically been built on screwing over the artist.

so we come to a position, one way or another, where a lot of people say something like: "I'm alienated. I'm surrounded by traditions and institutions I think are shit; I have no way to meaningfully undermine them, and I can't escape them without effectively destroying my life. the culture I was born into is a gravestone on top of another gravestone, lifeless and miserable, and people are constantly shouting that I should be grateful because it's The Greatest Country In The World."

at that point, one seeks an escape, and I think there are three major routes here.

one is to become a weird lib obsessed with the Real Soul Of America. America is really about the good parts, not the bad parts which outnumber them and which they are built upon.

another is to fixate on the Exotic, for lack of a better word. cultures which you do not have an obvious "connection" to, but which fascinate you or appeal to you. obviously this can be pretty fucking fraught, though I would argue that taking an interest in other cultures is a good thing if you aren't shitty about it. (That's its own conversation.)

the third is to fixate on the culture(s) you feel you "ought to have" had, that which was sacrificed on the altar of whiteness by grandparents or great-grandparents who, frankly, had different concerns. to look at a culture that may still be defined in many ways by cruelty and stratification - the way I would argue most human civilization has been - but that seems to have had something else going on, at least. a culture that may not have been recognizable 500 years ago, but at least it existed.

again, none of these impulses is beyond criticism, and I think it would be naive to say that the last one can't have reactionary undertones. I also doubt these impulses are unique to the USA! alienation is extremely common in today's world, and it's not as though the USA is the only settler state in existence.

what I am saying is more that I think the conditions that lead to these fixations are worth paying attention to, and that dismissing them with "you already have a culture" kind of misses the point in favor of getting in a zinger. people wouldn't want a different culture if they were happy with the one they had. like so many other things, people want one that Doesn't Completely Suck. failing that, they'd probably like to not be defined by any culture at all - but that, tragically, is just as impossible.

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chilpilled · 1 month

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one of the things i love most about the relationship between chilchuck and laios is that though they have vastly different outlooks, they still respect and engage with the others opinion. their relationship is one formed on the basis of deep mutual trust and respect. chilchuck doesnt hesitate to tell laios whats on his mind, and laios values his opinion and knows that chilchuck will be honest and blunt with him!! its easy to play it off as chilchuck being mean or a hater, but hes shown to really do care and be willing to actually engage with laios‘ ideas, like when he actually started second guessing himself about the mermaids. most of chilchucks criticisms are valid and laios knows that! thats why he trusts him and follows his advice.

laios doesnt understand why eating fishmen would be wrong, and though chilchuck cant really articulate it, laios immediately accepts it when he says its just a matter of feelings, while on the other hand, chilchuck actually does end up second guessing those feelings that he had, too. he kept quiet for marcilles benefit but he also ate the eggs himself and reconsidered his own stance. hes genuinely willing to engage with laios‘ ideas even if they go against his instincts! (as is shown in basically every single chapter)

especially considering the impact the shuro situation had on laios and how much he struggles with people lying to him and only pretending to understand, i think its nice that he has someone he can rely on to be honest with him and just tell him what he thinks. thats what laios asks of chilchuck when he goes to confront the demon, too. he wants chilchuck to bring him back to his senses, because he trusts him, and he knows that chilchuck will be the one person who would know what to say. and they didnt get the opportunity to actually try this plan, but i think the scene where chilchuck convinces laios to go back up to the surface again is all you need to know about why the winged lion isolated him.

#chilaios #a serious chilaios post? from me???#i think they kiss with tongue but u can read this in a platonic way too if u want honestly #i just care about them….they know and trust each other so much it makes me ill #dunmeshi #dunmeshi spoilers

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weirdmageddon · 8 months

Text

i posted this on twitter also but it’s still eating at me. i’m so fucking embarrassed to be jewish rn. i dont want to be associated with this ongoing bullshit from israel. why do we need our own state. theyre just making every jew across the globe look bad in general even though many of us are conflicted about zionism and the legitimacy of israel as a state

people have hated jews throughout history for no fuckin reason but now israel exists but now its like. GIVING people reasons to hate us as a group. note that i DON’T conflate zionism with jewishness, but a lot of people in the world don’t know the difference because theyre uninformed and been dripfed cultural antisemitic tropes their whole life and that’s the scary part is them falsely putting two and two together. like what the fuck israel stop youre just putting fuel on the fire for people around the world to hate an entire group of historically persecuted people if youre being this shitty with your insane colonialism and apartheid like……I Want No Fuckin Part Of This. you’re spelling our own doom. you cant just swoop in and go “mine now” and then oppress the people you took land from under a regime without my blood boiling at the injustice no matter WHO you are. even if my lineage is tied to you. so when news outlets support israel it doesn’t feel like they have the best interest of jews as a people in mind. it’s in the interest of a zionist ethnostate and whatever that christian zionism belief is about the jewish people returning to the holy land as prerequisite for the second coming of jesus. its not like they care about us as a dispersed ethnocultural group, it’s all for that religious narrative that a bunch of people in the US are backing.

saying you want all jews to die is antisemitic. beating someone up because they’re jewish and no other reason without knowing their views is antisemitic. criticizing human rights violations perpetrated by israel and the belief that one group deserves more rights another is not antisemitic. and the fact that israel has the ability to pull that antisemitism card in response to criticisms of the violations they commit because their state is the “jewish homeland” drives me fucking insane. take fucking accountability for your actions. and yes, there do exist full-on anti-jewish groups in the middle east that go beyond hatred of israel’s policies and existence as a state and i’m tired of people pretending there aren’t in fear of appearing to seem like they support the state of israel. on the other side of things many people overestimate this by fearmongering and saying EVERY arab is out to get jews worldwide, telling people like me “they want YOU dead”. this is not the belief every person in the middle east and it really rubs me the wrong way that people group millions of individuals into all-encompassing lumps like this. many people there do understand nuance of this political situation.

even if i have that “right of return” by israeli law or whatever, i don’t feel obliged to it; it does not register as fair. why do i have a “right of return” when i’ve never even been there in the first place while palestinians who have homes there can’t return to them? what’s the basis for that? substituting objective reality with an imaginary reality? i don’t think like that. i can hypothetically come and go whenever i please but palestinians are severely limited in mobility? what makes me more entitled to that land than the people who lived there for centuries? nothing that comes from natural law thats for sure. it’s all artificial and inflated.

but at the same time i also dont want to be the target of antisemitism and caught in the fray just for being ethnically jewish. once people start calling for the genocide of entire groups we’ve got issues (and you better believe this absolutely applies to the palestinian victims in gaza too), because people who dissent to the violence perpetrated by the loudest are caught in there with the people who are perpetrating the violence. lack of nuance. people conflating israel and its zionist apartheid policies with jewish ethnicity and culture worldwide. other people conflating being terrorist anti-jew with muslims worldwide (like that 6-year old palestinian-american boy that was just stabbed to death in chicago). scary times man. but as a jew i can’t just opt out of this if it’s how i was born as. i don’t have control over that. but i can control what i think and what my beliefs are

#israel palestine conflict #israel #palestine #what i feel is right most strongly resonates with secular humanist philosophy #never really found the right way to explain my worldview until i read about it

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