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[Narnia Content Note: Genocide, Religious Abuse, Chivalry, Racism, Slavery]
Content Note: Body Transformation]

Narnia Recap: Lucy has cast the spell to make things visible and will now spend time with the Magician Coriakin.

Voyage of the Dawn Treader, Chapter 11: The Dufflepuds Made Happy

Sigh.

There are times when it's difficult to deconstruct a text, and this is one of those times. I've been looking over this chapter every couple of days for the last week, and I still don't know what to say about it that hasn't been said already. It's awful and nasty and ugly stuff, and I don't know how to get through it but to barrel through. Let's hold our noses and plunge in.

   “When will the spell work?” asked Lucy. “Will the Duffers be visible again at once?”
   “Oh yes, they’re visible now. But they’re probably all asleep still; they always take a rest in the middle of the day.”
   “And now that they’re visible, are you going to let them off being ugly? Will you make them as they were before?”
   “Well, that’s rather a delicate question,” said the Magician. “You see, it’s only they who think they were so nice to look at before. They say they’ve been uglified, but that isn’t what I called it. Many people might say the change was for the better.”
   “Are they awfully conceited?”

I... no. What? NO.

There is no universe, no universe, in which that question naturally flows from what was said there. There sure as hell is no universe in which that question flows from Queen Lucy the Valiant. Lewis is asking us to accept, on the words of a star-man, that the bodily autonomy and self-determination of an entire race of people is nothing more than mere vanity simply because a star-man says he likes them better this way. (But not so much better, obviously, that he chooses to shed his own shape and join them in theirs.)

The only natural questions here are cagey ones soliciting more information ("What makes you say that?") or social justice ones which immediately call this out for the bullshit it is ("What gives you the right to make that decision for them?"). It is in no way natural to just immediately accept this framing and go along with it ("Oh, I see! So they're pretty vain, huh?"). Even if someone were inclined to assume perfect good faith on Coriakin's part, the result is more confusion than acceptance ("I'm sorry; I don't understand."). Not this wholesale, totally-accepting, Nothing To See Here Move Along, headlong rush to condemn the Dufflepuds.

And he is additionally asking us to accept that Lucy--Lucy who has fought battles to save Narnians from the White Witch and who has run with gods and monsters to save Narnians from the Telmarines and who has experienced slavery alongside the people of the Lone Islands, that Lucy, the Lucy who talked back to Saint Nick and told him that she was sure she'd be brave enough to fight regardless of whatever dreck he thought--just shrugged up her shoulders and accepted Coriakin's assessment of the situation because there's a kyriarch in the room and therefore that's all that should matter.

Furthermore, Lewis is trying to sneakily tie this in to his Fairest lesson in the last chapter; Lucy has "learned" her lesson that wanting to be pretty is Sinful, so now Lucy dutifully accepts that the Dufflepuds are wrong and sinful for not accepting this "improvement" that their god-appointed master has bestowed on them. And once again we are reminded that in this religious allegory, it is terrifyingly easy to insert various non-Protestant Christian groups into the role of the Dufflepuds here and realize that Protestant Christians very frequently did (and do) marginalize other religious groups by trying to control their dress, hairstyle, beard-style, and how they walk, talk, and act.

To a certain extent, I don't really think that it matters if Lewis intended the Dufflepuds to be Irish Catholics or Jewish people or atheists or just something 'silly' he dreamed up and stuck into his book. I don't mean that it's not a valuable topic for discussion--I think it is--but I do mean that at the end of the day, this is a story about a person that is privileged in every possible way (looks like Lewis + shares Lewis' culturally dominant religion) oppressing in some of the worst possible ways a group that is marginalized in just about every possible category (race and religion really only scratching the surface).

And Lewis is both saying that anyone unsatisfied with their marginalization is nothing more than Dangerously Vain (for the Magic Book showed us that vanity isn't just sinful, it's dangerous and inextricably linked with bad intentions) and that his religion not only approves of this state of affairs, it orchestrated it. Coriakin is there because god specifically put him there. And god just checked in five minutes ago to give him an attaboy. In my opinion, there's no way to slice that to be even remotely progressive. I don't even know how to slice it such that it isn't blatant hate speech against people who aren't C.S. Lewis and don't share his axes of privilege (i.e., Lucy et. al.).

   “They are. Or at least the Chief Duffer is, and he’s taught all the rest to be. They always believe every word he says.”
   “We’d noticed that,” said Lucy.
   “Yes—we’d get on better without him, in a way. Of course I could turn him into something else, or even put a spell on him which would make them not believe a word he said. But I don’t like to do that. It’s better for them to admire him than to admire nobody.”
   “Don’t they admire you?” asked Lucy.
   “Oh, not me,” said the Magician. “They wouldn’t admire me.”

I don't really know what to say to this except that it seems obvious to me that the fact that Coriakin hasn't turned the Chief into "something else" (i.e., "something worse", and it's telling how very hard Lewis is trying in this chapter to maintain the veil-of-cozy) is supposed to be taken as proof of his goodness. Sure.

And, really, this is how victim-blaming and kyriarchal sympathizing works. The Dufflepuds are annoying. (Just as Eustace was/is annoying and Edward was annoying in turn.) So we, the reader, are tempted by the author to write off their punishment as something they deserved. Or, at the very least, no real tragedy. And this can be accomplished very easily by subtly reminding the reader that these characters aren't real.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. (Many of us, I'm sure, know some fictional character they would gladly consign to the bottom of a very deep well.) But the problem arises when it's all too easy to de-personify actual people in real life and apply that same (wrong) logic to them: they are annoying / irritating / difficult-to-sympathize-with, therefore they had it coming.

The sort of feminism I live by requires me to refocus from that logic we're taught as children and instead point out that non-consensual boundary transgression is not okay. And to see that Coriakin had a choice to do what he did, and he did it anyway. Not for some greater good (though I'd be hard-pressed to know what greater good could ever justify what he has done), but because he thought the Dufflepuds were irksome. If we turn around and justify those actions under that same mentality--they're annoying, no great loss--then we are blaming victims and treating their victimizers as though they didn't make a horrific choice to victimize someone.

It's may be easier to see with the Dufflepuds, but it's important to point out, not the least because it's somehow so much easier for people not to notice (by choice or otherwise) when it's "bitchy" and "uppity" women of color like Aravis.

   “What was it you uglified them for—I mean, what they call uglified?”
   “Well, they wouldn’t do what they were told. Their work is to mind the garden and raise food—not for me, as they imagine, but for themselves. They wouldn’t do it at all if I didn’t make them. And of course for a garden you want water. There is a beautiful spring about half a mile away up the hill. And from that spring there flows a stream which comes right past the garden. All I asked them to do was to take their water from the stream instead of trudging up to the spring with their buckets two or three times a day and tiring themselves out besides spilling half of it on the way back. But they wouldn’t see it. In the end they refused point blank.”

I don't know what to say about this that hasn't already been said, by more people than I can keep track of:

--Coriakin could easily have installed an irrigation system instead.
--The transformation didn't make it easier to transport water.
--There's no indication that Coriakin tried to explain his ideas to the Dufflepuds instead of issuing orders.
--There are valid religious and sanitary reasons to do what the Dufflepuds did.
--Everything about the island indicates that this wasn't a life-or-death sustenance issue.
--Everything about the island indicates that the Dufflepuds have an excess of labor. 
--Everything about the island indicates that the Dufflepuds are supporting Coriakin, not vice versa.
--Coriakin seems to be using them as slave labor, which may imply deliberate civil disobedience.
--ASLAN THINKS PEOPLE AREN'T ENTITLED TO BODILY AUTONOMY. 

Anyway, Lucy is in full-on "admire the kyriarch because she's been taken over by the author" mode, so she continues to fawn on Coriakin: 

   “Are they as stupid as all that?” asked Lucy.
   The Magician sighed. “You wouldn’t believe the troubles I’ve had with them. A few months ago they were all for washing up the plates and knives before dinner: they said it saved time afterward. I’ve caught them planting boiled potatoes to save cooking them when they were dug up. One day the cat got into the dairy and twenty of them were at work moving all the milk out; no one thought of moving the cat. But I see you’ve finished. Let’s go and look at the Duffers now they can be looked at.”

I've already said this before, but I'll say it again: this is exactly the sort of civil disobedience that slaves will engage in so as to undermine their destructive masters. I do not believe that Lewis could have been wholly ignorant of this phenomenon. Which means that either he conveniently "forgot" it when he was crafting his slave population or he chose to misrepresent a relatively well-known phenomena in order to pretend that his fictional slave population really was that "stupid". Everything about that choice (either to forget or misrepresent) is odious to me.

   [...] here, when they had come to the window, the Magician said, “There. There are your Duffers.”
   “I don’t see anybody,” said Lucy. “And what are those mushroom things?”
   The things she pointed at were dotted all over the level grass. They were certainly very like mushrooms, but far too big—the stalks about three feet high and the umbrellas about the same length from edge to edge. When she looked carefully she noticed too that the stalks joined the umbrellas not in the middle but at one side which gave an unbalanced look to them. And there was something—a sort of little bundle—lying on the grass at the foot of each stalk. In fact the longer she gazed at them the less like mushrooms they appeared. The umbrella part was not really round as she had thought at first. It was longer than it was broad, and it widened at one end. There were a great many of them, fifty or more.
   The clock struck three.
   Instantly a most extraordinary thing happened. Each of the “mushrooms” suddenly turned upside-down. The little bundles which had lain at the bottom of the stalks were heads and bodies. The stalks themselves were legs. But not two legs to each body. Each body had a single thick leg right under it (not to one side like the leg of a one-legged man) and at the end of it, a single enormous foot—a broad-toed foot with the toes curling up a little so that it looked rather like a small canoe. She saw in a moment why they had looked like mushrooms. They had been lying flat on their backs each with its single leg straight up in the air and its enormous foot spread out above it. She learned afterward that this was their ordinary way of resting; for the foot kept off both rain and sun and for a Monopod to lie under its own foot is almost as good as being in a tent.

I want to point out something here. The Dufflepuds aren't described by their own words; we never hear what words they would use if asked to convey their description. That is a huge problem, that we only see what the Dufflepuds look like through privileged eyes, and that it is People Like Lewis (white, privileged, British, etc.) who have the definitive word on how the Dufflepuds are viewed by the reader. I have zero doubt that were the Dufflepuds allowed to describe themselves, these are not the words they would use.

Additionally, please note how much of these paragraphs are devoted to de-personifying the Dufflepuds by comparing them to things. They are mushrooms, they have stalks, they are umbrellas, they are bundles. Even once they are ostensibly people, their feet are still likened to tents even though this is a patently absurd comparison. (The value of a tent is as a wind-breaker and a blocker of things which the wind would otherwise drive into you, whether it be sand, dirt, snow, rain, or other elements.) It is abundantly clear that "umbrella" would have been a better comparison here, but Lewis had already used that and de-personifying requires a constant barrage of reminders that the people in question are objects rather than people.

The Dufflepuds are also situated in a way which would seem to make them more like animals than people. Despite having a house/tower right there which they apparently take their evening meals in (and sleep in??), they are sleeping on the ground without any kind of blanket or covering or shelter beyond what is provided by their own bodies, and in a large clustered group. There is no description of clothing or adornments or anything that could differentiate one person from another. There are no descriptions of smaller clusters of families or familial groups sheltering children. Despite the fact that Coriakin has claimed that the Dufflepuds tend "the garden", there is no mention of tools. There is no detail to indicate that the Dufflepuds have any personality beyond The Chief (who has no name) and a literal Chorus of undifferentiated voices. For all that we're given here, the Dufflepuds might as well be cows or a herd of (non-talking) animals.

   “Oh, the funnies, the funnies,” cried Lucy, bursting into laughter. “Did you make them like that?”
   “Yes, yes. I made the Duffers into Monopods,” said the Magician. He too was laughing till the tears ran down his cheeks.

F-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-f-

Off is the general direction in which I wish you would fuck. @ cynicism101.com

Yup. Seems like you have a case of shut the fuck up. @ someecards.com

Oh, gosh. Where do I start? Well, first of all, fuck you. @ someecards.com

You are cordially invited to go fuck yourself. @ someecards.com

Let's play the fuck off game. You go first. @ someecards.com

As you can clearly see here, fuck you. @ someecards.com

You put the "You" in Fuck You. @ someecards.com

Yes, that's correct. And the horse you rode in on. @ danceswithfat.wordpress.com

-f-f-f-f-f-f-FUCK YOU.

   It was worth watching. Of course these little one-footed men couldn’t walk or run as we do. They got about by jumping, like fleas or frogs. And what jumps they made!—as if each big foot were a mass of springs. And with what a bounce they came down; that was what made the thumping noise which had so puzzled Lucy yesterday. 

They're frogs! They're fleas! They're springs! They're bouncey castles! They're literally ANYTHING EXCEPT PEOPLE! 

   “She caught the old man napping, that little girl did,” said the Chief Monopod. “We’ve beaten him this time.”   “Just what we were going to say ourselves,” chimed the chorus. “You’re going stronger than ever today, Chief. Keep it up, keep it up.”
   “But do they dare to talk about you like that?” said Lucy. “They seemed to be so afraid of you yesterday. Don’t they know you might be listening?”
   “That’s one of the funny things about the Duffers,” said the Magician. “One minute they talk as if I ran everything and overheard everything and was extremely dangerous. The next moment they think they can take me in by tricks that a baby would see through—bless them!”

Or, you know, their lives are so miserable that they either figure it can't get worse or they're actively trying to convince the Magician to kill them and release them from their torment. Gallows humor. If you don't laugh, you'll cry. These are known phenomena.

But all that is so much fluff because this passage is really about how marginalized people should be frightened of their stronger, more powerful "betters" except that they don't have a real reason to be afraid because of course their privileged "betters" wouldn't give in to base tempers (except when transforming everyone in a community over a water dispute, which is totally reasonable and not petty at all) and have only their health in mind, but that's only because their "betters" are Good People who deserve Cookies, and the marginalized people really should recognize that and be appropriately grateful.

Unlike these ungrateful asshole Dufflepuds, obvs.

   “Will they have to be turned back into their proper shapes?” asked Lucy. “Oh, I do hope it wouldn’t be unkind to leave them as they are. Do they really mind very much? They seem pretty happy. I say—look at that jump. What were they like before?”
   “Common little dwarfs,” said he. “Nothing like so nice as the sort you have in Narnia.”
   “It would be a pity to change them back,” said Lucy. “They’re so funny: and they’re rather nice. Do you think it would make any difference if I told them that?”
   “I’m sure it would—if you could get it into their heads.”
   “Will you come with me and try?”
   “No, no. You’ll get on far better without me.”

How many times do you have to say "What the Fuck?" before it becomes your catchphrase? @ someecards.com

I have nothing but contempt and rage.

   “Thanks awfully for the lunch,” said Lucy and turned quickly away. She ran down the stairs which she had come up so nervously that morning and cannoned into Edmund at the bottom. All the others were there with him waiting, and Lucy’s conscience smote her when she saw their anxious faces and realized how long she had forgotten them.
   “It’s all right,” she shouted. “Everything’s all right. The Magician’s a brick—and I’ve seen Him—Aslan.”

sljafiewrofjksfhioewuqr[ojfklahf;iwqeury[owrehasfjkfhlkjhwqer

   After that she went from them like the wind and out into the garden. Here the earth was shaking with the jumps and the air ringing with the shouts of the Monopods. Both were redoubled when they caught sight of her.
   “Here she comes, here she comes,” they cried. “Three cheers for the little girl. Ah! She put it across the old gentleman properly, she did.”
   “And we’re extremely regrettable,” said the Chief Monopod, “that we can’t give you the pleasure of seeing us as we were before we were uglified, for you wouldn’t believe the difference, and that’s the truth, for there’s no denying we’re mortal ugly now, so we won’t deceive you.”
   [...] “But I don’t think you are at all,” said Lucy, shouting to make herself heard. “I think you look very nice.”

Then there's a lot of polite agreeful argument back-and-forth which is intended to illustrate that the Dufflepuds are all stupid silly fools, and it would probably never occur to someone like C.S. Lewis that it sounds a lot like someone marginalized choosing to "agree" with a more privileged person but in a manner that subtly indicates disagreement with what is being said, and which is done that way because they have genuine concerns about politeness, retaliation, tone, and various other things that privileged people generally don't need to worry about.

Like "agreeing in a disagreeful way" and "disagreeing in an agreeful way" are both things that I have to do a lot as a woman. Just saying.

   “You’re enough to drive anyone mad,” said Lucy, and gave it up. But the Monopods seemed perfectly contented, and she decided that on the whole the conversation had been a success.And before everyone went to bed that evening something else happened which made them even more satisfied with their one-legged condition. [...] When they reached the bay, Reepicheep had a brilliant idea. He had his little coracle lowered and paddled himself about in it till the Monopods were thoroughly interested. He then stood up in it and said, “Worthy and intelligent Monopods, you do not need boats. Each of you has a foot that will do instead. Just jump as lightly as you can on the water and see what happens.”

And that was why we burned a village down: So Reepicheep would have a boat (which will have one other use) and the Dufflepuds could be made to be "satisfied" with their body transformation. Because who needs to make a boat for hirself when instead you could have your body shaped by dark magics against your will and consent etc.

   And they had races, and bottles of wine were lowered down to them from the ship as prizes, and the sailors stood leaning over the ship’s sides and laughed till their own sides ached.

I... you... NO.

I literally have nothing left for this chapter. Either you are there with me and find this horrific and disgusting and terrible, or you aren't. Either way, anything I have left to say will belabor the point in a way that won't help anyone. So I'm going to switch to mechanical details.

   The Duffers were also very pleased with their new name of Monopods, which seemed to them a magnificent name though they never got it right. “That’s what we are,” they bellowed. “Moneypuds, Pomonods, Poddymons. Just what it was on the tips of our tongue to call ourselves.” But they soon got it mixed up with their old name of Duffers and finally settled down to calling themselves the Dufflepuds; and that is what they will probably be called for centuries.

The correct name for a person is what they say it is. In case you've been wondering why I've been using that term all along while the text has been calling them "Duffers".

   That evening all the Narnians dined upstairs with the Magician, and Lucy noticed how different the whole top floor looked now that she was no longer afraid of it. The mysterious signs on the doors were still mysterious but now looked as if they had kind and cheerful meanings, and even the bearded mirror now seemed funny rather than frightening.

This establishes that Coriakin is not genuinely scary after all (just in case there were any doubts) and that Lucy was in the wrong (sinful) state of mind when she climbed the stairs this morning, and thus any beautifying and eavesdropping impulses she had came from a Wrong Mind and were therefore Wrong Actions, as opposed to, say, eavesdropping by Aslan or Peter Pevensie which always came from a Good Mind and were therefore Good Actions.

   At dinner everyone had by magic what everyone liked best to eat and drink, and after dinner the Magician did a very useful and beautiful piece of magic. He laid two blank sheets of parchment on the table and asked Drinian to give him an exact account of their voyage up to date: and as Drinian spoke, everything he described came out on the parchment in fine clear lines till at last each sheet was a splendid map 
   [...] They were the first maps ever made of those seas and better than any that have been made since without magic. For on these, though the towns and mountains looked at first just as they would on an ordinary map, when the Magician lent them a magnifying glass you saw that they were perfect little pictures of the real things, so that you could see the very castle and slave market and streets in Narrowhaven, all very clear though very distant, like things seen through the wrong end of a telescope. The only drawback was that the coastline of most of the islands was incomplete, for the map showed only what Drinian had seen with his own eyes. 

I do like how incomplete maps are The Best Maps Of Those Seas Ever because you can see streets on land. Because obviously when you are on the sea, you need to see streets down to the individual brick, but shit like shore lines and relative depth and whatnot is optional. Obviously.

   When they were finished the Magician kept one himself and presented the other to Caspian: it still hangs in his Chamber of Instruments at Cair Paravel. 

WHY DOES HE NEED ONE, THERE IS ZERO INDICATION THAT HE WILL EVER LEAVE THIS ISLAND YOU KNOW WHAT I DON'T CARE. I'm sure he just keeps it to look at every so often in order to remind himself of how awesome he is.

   But the Magician could tell them nothing about seas or lands further east. 

It's not like he had a star's eye view for however many centuries or whatever.

   He did, however, tell them that about seven years before a Narnian ship had put in at his waters and that she had on board the Lords Revilian, Argoz, Mavramorn and Rhoop: so they judged that the golden man they had seen lying in Deathwater must be the Lord Restimar.

Despite the fact that everything about the Golden Person argued for a time period well before the Telmarine invasion, but we're on a schedule.

Also, hey, Lewis d'ya wanna tell us about how the Dufflepuds were doing seven years ago when the Telmarines pulled in to port? No, because fuck you for thinking about them when you're supposed to be focusing on Gold Boy Caspian and his golden adventures of goldeness. I mean really. Geez.

   Next day, the Magician magically mended the stern of the Dawn Treader where it had been damaged by the Sea Serpent and loaded her with useful gifts. There was a most friendly parting, and when she sailed, two hours after noon, all the Dufflepuds paddled out with her to the harbor mouth, and cheered until she was out of sound of their cheering.

We're now done with this horrible, hateful chapter and I shall never again remember why I liked VoDT the most as a child. I want to sob until I have no tears left and then pour all the tears on C.S. Lewis' grave and then light them on fire. BECAUSE MY TEARS ARE FLAMMABLE.

Katie J.M. Baker investigates:

“Schools should encourage students to seek treatment. But a lot of policies I see involve excessive use of discipline and involuntary leaves of absence, and they discourage students from asking for the help they need,” says Karen Bower, a private attorney who specializes in disability discrimination cases in higher education. “Ultimately, that makes the campus less safe.”

Two large-scale studies found that around 10 percent of college student respondents had thought about suicide in the past year, but only 1.5 percent admitted to having made a suicide attempt. Combined with data from other studies, that suggests that the odds that a student with suicidal ideation – the medical term for suicidal thoughts – will actually commit suicide are 1,000 to 1. “Thus, policies that impose restrictions on students who manifest suicidal ideation will sweep in 999 students who would not commit suicide for every student who will end his or her life,” Paul S. Appelbaum writes in Law & Psychiatry: “Depressed? Get Out!”

“Colleges don’t want people who are suicidal around, so what’s supposed to happen to them?” says Ira Burnim, legal director of the D.C. Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law. “We’re going to lock them in a bomb shelter?” Kicking students off campus for mental health issues typically does more harm than good by isolating them from their support systems when what they really need is stability and empathy, he says. Moreover, it’s often a completely unnecessary overreaction.

Malachi Ritscher set himself on fire next to the “Flame of the Millennium” sculpture above, in view of rush hour traffic, near downtown Chicago on a Friday morning. This was November 3, 2006, in protest of the war in Iraq. I was commuting on the blue line to my paralegal job in downtown Chicago when this happened. I did not hear about it until three years later.

The mainstream press sat on the news. It was not reported on by the Associated Press for weeks.

When the Chicago Sun-Times covered it on November 9, Richard Roeper, the first member of the mainstream press to acknowledge Malachi’s death, used the word “martyr” in scare quotes and said, “with all great respect, if he thought setting himself on fire and ending his life in Chicago would change anyone’s mind about the war in Iraq, his last gesture on this planet was his saddest and his most futile.” The article is no longer on their site but it has been archived.

So Dick Roeper thought the sane, productive reaction to suffering in the world was to talk about movies all day, have tons of money, and occasionally walk down to your newspaper job where people pay you to say what you think — and fart all over a dead man who, for some reason, felt like his voice wasn’t being heard.

The theoretical motivation for this kind of coverage is to prevent more suicides. Corporatized media would rather prevent the voluntary deaths of a handful of U.S. extremists than prevent the involuntary deaths of hundreds or thousands of men, women and children elsewhere in the world. The Associated Press article, published on November 26, says there was only one problem with Malachi’s plan, “no one was listening,” i.e. the Associated Press was not listening.

I heard about this in 2009 because of my exposure to the Chicago noise music community. The lack of media coverage was part of the story of Malachi’s death as I heard it.

According to Wikipedia’s “List of political self-immolations” Malachi Rischter is the most recent person in the U.S. to immolate themselves for political reasons.

A quick google search reveals a U.S. man who on October 4, 2013, set himself on fire [graphic images] on the National Mall in D.C. The first comment on that article: “You can show a picture of a man who self-immolated himself and is on fire but it’s not okay to show his butt. Really?”

He was a veteran of the Vietnam War named John Constantino. During the government shutdown and after the repeal of the Voting Rights Act, John said something about voting rights and saluted the Capitol before immolating himself. His family’s lawyer says he was mentally disturbed and not making a political statement. Without a community of artists or activists involved, there’s no one around to say otherwise.

On September 27, 2013, a Houston man in a business suit sat cross-legged on a pillow and doused himself with diesel in front of the Exxon-Mobile building. Police prevented him from setting himself on fire. He was a 25 year old man “with a history of mental illness” according to police, though they did not identify him to the public. He was not interviewed by anyone. He wrote something on a sign but, somehow, no one knows what it was.

In 1996 Kathy Change, a middle-aged Asian American artist and activist who liked to call herself a “fun protester” immolated herself on the University of Pennsylvania campus. Her wikipedia page makes sure to mention she suffered “with what many considered to be mental illness,” and that she saw “psychiatrists off and on for her adult life.” The New York Times article wikipedia uses as a citation for this description does not reference those things, though it does say that “to many” students she seemed like “a crazy woman.”

How upset do you have to be before you are mentally ill? I think the desire to separate political action from emotion is a symptom of the masculine cultural assumptions operating in our lives. People with strong feelings must be unstable, so the detachment required to be emotionless about situations must produce better decisions. This is an authoritative male way of thinking: the people with the least at stake should make the decisions.

It is “insane” to harm yourself to bring attention to a larger set of issues or in an attempt to bring empathy to people outside yourself. It is “sane” to keep your head down and do work that rich men tell you to do, if you can find some who think you deserve to eat and have a place to sleep.

Kathy Change delivered packets with statements about her views to multiple news outlets and people she knew. According to the writer of this essay, the University Review was the only media outlet that published excerpts of her peace essays at the time. They also posted one of her essays online for the 2010 anniversary of her death. It opens, “We are in the process of shifting paradigms from patriarchy to matriarchy.”

Here is the only visual art of hers I could find online, a single scanned page from Kathy Change’s 1976 children’s book The Iron Moonhunter, about Chinese railway workers in the U.S. in the 19th century.

Here are some quotes I’ve come across, most of them come from the packets she distributed in 1996:

“I want to protest the present government and economic system and the cynicism and passivity of the people in general. I want to protest this entirely shameful state of affairs as emphatically as I can.” This is quoted on her wikipedia page and elsewhere with the second sentence edited into the first, making for better copy but reducing emphasis. I think this might summarize the relationship “the media” has with thought and feeling.

"For eighteen years I have been trying to urge people to throw off the corruption and go for the good, but I don’t see my efforts as being successful in any way, except that it’s given me something to do. I do not want to live off of this evil society any longer.”

“Our political system and economic system are figments of the collective imagination. We can dissolve them instantly with just a moment of unanimous disbelief. But realistically this moment of ‘unanimous disbelief’ is most probable at the point the economy collapses.”

"All people whose work is not immediately essential to maintaining life should stop working and meet in community assemblies to form the new self-government and begin the conference to create a new society. People who do essential work (such as utilities, communications, food and hospital workers) would continue to work, but instead of working for their old corporate bosses, they will democratize their workplaces. People who stopped doing non-essential work will join the essential workforce and the workload will be redistributed so no one will work more than 20 hours a week and all will have time to attend the conference to create a new society…"

There’s more of her writing on kathychange.org and a memorial every year on the University of Pennsylvania campus at the place of her death.

From our perspective, staying alive seems obviously, stupidly better than setting yourself on fire. If you have that kind of passion, why not stay alive and share it with others? But these people felt this was not an option, or believed self-destruction was the only way left to express themselves.

You and I wouldn’t have read anything Kathy Change wrote if she hadn’t killed herself the way she did. We wouldn’t know anything about Malachi Rischter or John Constantino if they hadn’t done what they did.

We’ve been setting ourselves on fire for thousands of years for a variety of reasons. Recent self-immolations across the globe have seemed to stem from economic inequality and uncertainty.

During the Vietnam War the U.S. was shocked by images of the self-immolation of Thích Quảng Đức. This shock can’t be reproduced, because it was new and strange to 1963 U.S. culture: calm intentional self-destruction, Mahayana Buddhism and evocative, exotic images of violence that could be reproduced in print and on television. This seems like different territory for “the media” as well, who chose at that time to believe their audience would be interested in and moved by suffering caused by U.S. actions and policies.

Because of our media, because of the relentless stream of discontinuous and surreal images most of us are normalized to, because of our firm belief that non-participation in society is “insane,” it is difficult to imagine an extreme act like self-immolation that could (or would be allowed to) capture our imaginations.

Even Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation in Tunisia, pointed to as the catalyst for the Arab Spring of 2011, was not an attempt at enacting social change, but a desperate expression that resonated with others. For every death like Bouazizi’s there are countless others who set themselves on fire without instigating much social change, and without interesting a community enough for their act to be brought into context with their life and the surrounding environment that affected them so strongly.

Our culture does not seem open to reflecting on a single person or a single act or a single image. Or on much of anything. It seems clear to me we need extended, indefinite acts of protest or revolt. We need the people who perform these acts to stay alive and help us contextualize what they are doing and saying. I’m not sure we need people in places of social power to listen to or respect us. We need to be clear that their power comes from us, and we may not even have to take it back from them. We might change our hearts and minds until their power is gone.

Rhys Southan Bob Comis, who raises pigs for meat, confesses that “no matter how well it’s done, I can’t help but question the killing itself”:

In a well-managed, small-scale slaughterhouse, a pig is more or less casually standing there one second, and the next second it’s unconscious on the ground, and a few seconds after that it’s dead. As far as I can tell — and I’ve seen dozens of pigs killed properly — the pig has no experience of its own death. But I experience the full brunt of that death.

It’s not the sight of blood that troubles me, but the violence of the death throes. Livestock science would assure us that these convulsions are a sign of the pigs’ insensibility, but as a witness, it is almost impossible to believe that the pigs are not thrashing around because they are in pain. And then that sudden lifelessness of the body as it is mechanically hoisted into the air, shackled by a single hind leg. I don’t think anything could be done to make the deaths of the pigs weigh less heavily on me.

I think a lot of animal farmers have the same ethical struggles me, although I’m not sure how many struggle as intensely as I do. I believe this is likely the case with even non-corporate factory farmers. Feeling nothing strikes me as mildly sociopathic.

Update from a reader:

Bob Comis has just followed up with an article in The Dodo. He has taken the next step:

In the current discourse, happy pigs are the ideal alternative to the miserable and abused pigs raised in factory farms. Happy pigs become happy meat, and happy meat is good. We should feel good about eating happy meat.

Happy meat, really? I am haunted by the ghosts of nearly 2,000 happy pigs.

(About a month ago, I had my final crisis of conscience, in a decade of more or less intense crises of conscience. Having abandoned the last vestige of what seemed to be at the time legitimate justification, happiness and a quick, painless death, I became a vegetarian. I am now in the beginning stages of the complicated process of ending my life as a pig farmer.)

Speaking of happy pigs, another reader sends along a video:

Previous Dish on swimming pigs here. One more reader:

I’m a meat eater, I confess. I like meat. That said, I also worked in a slaughterhouse for three years. I don’t think it’s woo-woo to say that I think the people who do the actual killing and dismemberment of animals pay a deep spiritual price. Problem is, in this culture there is no way to process that effectively. Some cultures have a sense of gratitude for the animals and a humility in taking the life of another creature. We don’t. Nowhere is that more pointed than on the slaughterhouse (dis)assembly line. I gave a presentation at a conference a few years ago where I asserted that the line workers carry the psycho-spiritual burden for all of us and particularly for corporate leaders and investors who profit financially. A job shifting more and more to Hispanic immigrants, among those with the least privilege in our culture. I wondered how practices might evolve if executives were expected spend time working the line, both for the sacrificed animals and for the workers. We need a genuine gratitude for both.

Previous Dish on processing livestock here, here, and here.

Claire Cain Miller, writing for the NYT (ran on the front page of yesterday’s print edition):

The value of Plus has only increased in the last year, as search advertising, Google’s main source of profits, has slowed. At the same time, advertising based on the kind of information gleaned from what people talk about, do and share online, rather than simply what they search for, has become more important.

The conventional wisdom about Google is that they’re selling our privacy to advertisers. That’s no longer a fringe opinion — it’s the consensus. They’re breeding resentment.

How Our Television Reinforces Our Politics:

According to one study released in November 2010 by the media-research company Experian Simmons, some of the most popular Republican shows include The Amazing Race, American Idol, Survivor, Dancing With the Stars, and Desperate Housewives. Democrats, on the other hand, prefer Mad Men, Dexter, 30 Rock, The Good Wife, and Damages. Out of the top 15 shows for each political affiliation, not one of them appears on both lists.

“Looking at the Democrats side, I don’t mean to make light of it, but they seem to like shows about damaged people,” said John Fetto, senior marketing manager at Experian Simmons. “Those are the kind of shows Republicans just stay away from.”

In December 2011, Experian Simmons released another survey in which self-identified “Conservative Republicans” and “Liberal Democrats” once again shared their viewing habits. The Right favored titles such as Swamp Loggers, Top Shot, The Bachelor, Only in America With Larry the Cable Guy, Pawn Stars, The Biggest Loser, and NCIS. The Left tilted toward The Daily Show With Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation, The View, Glee, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

As Entertainment Weekly put it, “‘sarcastic’ media-savvy comedies and morally murky antiheroes tend to draw Dems. While serious work-centered shows (both reality shows and stylized scripted procedurals), along with reality competitions, tend to draw conservatives.”

In October 2012, The New York Times published the results of a TiVo-based study, which found that while registered Republicans tend to watch golf, registered Democrats have a penchant for cartoons, as in Family Guy and American Dad. Republicans also like NASCAR and reality TV competition shows such as The Biggest Loser, Survivor, American Idol, and The Amazing Race. Democrats prefer to watch the sitcoms 30 Rock and Community, AMC dramas The Killing and Mad Men, and late-night funny guys Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

I just read that INTPs often don’t know what they want to do in life until their late 20s, early 30s. What is your take on this or personal experience?

I was reading the front sticker on an unopened bottle of Listerine. Then, I just embraced the bottle gently, pecked it on the cap and started to sway side to side with it resting in my arms. My chin on the cap, I said to myself, “I think you might be lonely.” “Probably.” I replied.  

Last three on the island:

Pluralities of US conservatives believe, or at least claim to believe, that:

The President of the US is a socialist Muslim, born in Kenya
The earth is less than 10 000 years old
Mainstream science is a communist plot
Armed revolution will likely be necessary in the near future

Holy shit, just six years?  It feels like forever ago that I moved out on my own and began the “don’t have to justify everything I do, can go about my home 99% certain no one will yell at me” lifestyle. I figured like ten at least, maybe twelve..  But no, the math checks out. It’s only been six years.

That’s pretty exciting actually. Thinking of all the adventures I’ve been on, all the things I’ve learned, all the good times I’ve had, in just six years.  I mean, shit, I’ve got possibly sixty left.  That’s all of that, ten times over.

Man. I think this is what hope tastes like.

I asked folks to send in some #ScienceValentines - and here are a just few of them (more in our twitter feed).  Tweet more to @nprscience!

Also, these.

Your customers don’t know they have a problem. How the hell are you supposed to sell to them?!

We discussed this in 30×500 not too long ago, between a student, Alex, and me… and now I’m sharing it with you.

Background:

• The student in question was doing his Sales Safari research on the Flippa forums, focusing on a thread by a woman who was doing everything wrong in her quest to sell her web site.
• “Worldview” isn’t just a term, it’s a concept from 30×500, because Niches are for suckers.
• Ebombs are what we in 30×500 call targeted, actionable, educational content marketing pieces. Cuz that’s way too many words.

---

30×500 STUDENT:

1) PAIN: I’m worried about losing money on a website. FIX: Checklist of due diligence items when buying a website.

2) PAIN: I don’t know what my expectations should be when buying a website. FIX: List of typical characteristics when buying a new website.

3) PAIN: I don’t know where to start when it comes to buying a new website. FIX: List of things to expect when buying a new website.

Pain 2 seems to be more literally what she [the customer being Safari'd] is asking, but Pain 1 seems like it is more useful in general. But maybe the pains and their fixes should be really specific?

Thanks for your help, I’m still a bit lost in general, some of the pains Amy identified in ebomb reviews as separate still feel the same to me.

---

AMY

Hey! Great question!

The pain here is something like: I don’t know how to avoid being ripped off when purchasing an incoming generating website.

How about

5 Signs Someone Is Trying To Rip You Off on Flippa ?

the Pains you identified below are much closer to a core pain… which is great for a product! But ebombs can be very superficial (or, shall we say, immediate), and list posts often the most superficial (immediate) pains of all.

Take the pain and directly reverse it.

“I don’t know how to avoid…” “Here’s 5 things you need to avoid…”

… to which I’d add that if you have to change worldviews — and this woman sounds like a hot mess, really — then you need to lure them in with stuff they know they want, and then go “but really, if you have xyz problem, you ought to consider this other thing instead…”

You know, pilling the dog. Wrap that unappetizing pill in tasty, tasty bacon.

---

ALEX:

Pilling the dog, by the way, is different from bait and switch.

In a bait and switch, you offer something they want and then at the last second, swap in something else less desirable.

In pilling the dog, they still get what they want But you give more than they originally bargained for, in their own favor!

---

AMY:

“It’s medicine… it’s good for you!”

You shouldn’t always strive to change a person’s worldview. In fact, if your product’s success depends on everybody changing their deep-seated beliefs… you’re probably screwed.

But it can’t hurt if you help them with an immediate issue and some day they realize “I can’t keep doing things like this” and they then start looking for something to help them move forward and look, hey, at that blog they’ve been reading forever…

---

ALEX:

It’s borderline impossible to change someone’s worldview unless they WANT to have it changed.

You can pill the dog and lead them to discover it themselves. But be careful with expectations. I’d put this approach in the “advanced techniques: not for the weak of heart” category.

---

AMY:

Yeah, worldview change is hard.

First, they have to be open to it. Maybe they haven’t deliberately thought “Gee what other worldviews could I have?” — but something deep down is leaving them dissatisfied.

Or they are in a crisis. That’s when people most often end up changing.

You can’t force either of those things… you can only be a gentle nudge when one of those things is already happening.

But, the ebomb you wrote MIGHT change worldviews. Somebody might go there looking for info cuz they’re desperate not to be scammed… and at the end you turn a little light on that suggests maybe there’s a better way.

It can be a side effect. Deliberately setting out to do it — while selling a product — is probably not going to get you great results. You don’t want to sell to somebody who disagrees with you on a deep level!

Your approach to “Hey, here’s more on x topic” or “have you thought of it liek this? read this other article”… that could be very beneficial. :)

---

In short: people don’t change…

…until their life sucks. That’s the dirty truth of the Fuck This Moment (FTM).

In your biz, you can work a Be There When They Hit a Fuck This Moment strategy.

But if that’s your only strategy for acquiring customers, well, there’s little you can do to drum up sales when you want to, because you can’t force somebody else’s FTM. Epiphanies can’t be forced.

You can, however, build up a library of actionable educational content marketing (we call them “ebombs” in 30×500). And if you play your cards right, if you write to reach people using their existing pains, and each time you lift up the curtain a little bit more, you can help people over the hump… and help them see, bit by bit, that their suffering is caused by their worldview, and they can change it.

It’s still a tough row to hoe. Far easier to serve people who are already in the process of changing, already in motion.

Photo Credit: marygallant

[trigger warning for child sexual abuse, rape, domestic violence]

I’m not entirely sure when it happened, but from the reading I’ve been doing, sometime in the last 30 or so years there’s been a subtle shift in how churches talk about growth. What my reading tells me is that this is at least somewhat connected to the rise of the “mega church,” with it becoming impossible for pastoral staffs to simply look around their churches and understand who their congregation is.

There’s a certain appeal to evaluating church growth by the numbers, especially when church sizes seem to be ballooning. Applying business models that are intended to bring growth can be extremely useful for a variety of organizations, and churches are, really, just organizations. Organizations that are almost totally defined by “growth,” for better or for worse. Even in Acts, as my partner pointed out yesterday, the apostles tossed around a lot of numbers. Peter, especially, has one famous speech about Pentecost and how many were saved.

In the churches I’ve been in that have talked numbers– “X many people were saved! X many people were baptized! X many people have joined our church in the last year!”– the focus has almost always been hope. Numbers are real, concrete indications that we’re headed in the right direction, that what we’re doing is making a difference. Numbers are people.

But, in the last year, my perspective has changed quite a bit. I used to hear those numbers shouted from pulpits all over the country and exult right along with the preacher. And, in some ways, I still do. But, when I hear about how many people regularly come to church, and how many children are in Sunday school, and how many babies are dedicated, a completely different set of numbers starts spinning around my head, and it makes my heart ache.

My heart has been especially broken this week, since Bob Jones University decided to terminate the investigation they’d hired GRACE to do. I wasn’t a student of BJU, but I did grow up in that world and I know many people who were– and I know how important the GRACE investigation was to them, how much hope it had given them that maybe, just maybe, BJU could turn over a new leaf.

But, just like the Association of Baptists for World Evangelism, and just like Sovereign Grace Ministries, and IBLP, and just like countless other churches and ministries all over the globe, BJU has decided to do what far too many other Christians have done: turn a blind eye to the abuses happening under their watch– abuses they are allowing to happen through their silence, abuses they are complicit in.

I know how hard it is to face the bleak reality that there are so many people willing to hurt others. That abuse in so many forms is commonplace. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to be a pastor and stand in front of your congregation and know that there are abusers and victims in your church. That you could be shaking the hand of a pedophile or rapist after church. That you could be eating dinner in the home of a batterer. That you can’t know. Not for sure.

But, this is a reality that does need to be faced. We need to look it dead, square in the eye and let it change us. We need to keep in front of us, always, that people are hurting and desperate and don’t know a way out. That most victims don’t even know they’re being abused, that abusers cloak themselves in forgiveness and grace and redemption, that some abusive husbands will use “I am the head of this home and you are my wife, so you must submit to me” as a weapon.

So, because this needs to be something that we know, something that changes how we talk, changes the advice we give, changes the way we love the people in our churches– I’ve broken down an average church size by the most reliable statistics we have.

Most churches in the United States have an average church attendance of around 500 adults, 125 children. Most congregations are dominated by married adults, so in this “average church,” there are 200 married couples, 275 women and 225 men, 64 girls and 61 boys. This means that in this church:

• At least 40 marriages are abusive. Studies show that anywhere from 20%-35% of all intimate relationships are abusive, and many are physically violent. Physical abuse is not the only form abuse can take, and other types of abuse are just as damaging.
• As many as 20 women are being consistently raped by their husbands. Studies performed by Susan Estrech and Diana Russel indicate that 10% of married women describe most of their sexual encounters with their husbands as non-consensual.
• 38 of the men were sexually abused as children.
• 68 of the women were sexually abused as children.
• Another 55 women have been raped, probably in college.
• 7 men have been raped as adults, although if you are near a military base that number is probably  higher.
• 16 of the girls will experience sexual abuse.
• 10 of the boys will experience sexual abuse.
• 1 or 2 of these children are being physically abused by their parents.
• It is possible that there are 9 child sexual abuse perpetrators in this church, since 30% of all child sexual abuse perpetrators are close family relatives– usually male relatives, although in 9%-14% of cases the pedophile is a woman. Another 30% of the time the perpetrator is another, older, minor.

That’s a possible 256 people– 40% of this “average” congregation– who have been violently wounded by some kind of horrific abuse. This isn’t something we can afford to ignore. This is something that should utterly break us and radically transform everything we do as a church body. We can’t be dismissive of hurt. We can’t ignore that there’s darkness and pain and suffering. We can’t preach messages filled to the brim with ideas that can be turned into weapons by abusers. We can’t afford the blithe, non-committal “if you’re being abused, you need to get out,” and then move past that as if it doesn’t happen here. We have to stop burying our heads in the sand with our “God doesn’t give us more than we can handle!” and our “faith like a mustard seed!”

We have to be the ones who love the hurting and the broken, who acknowledge their pain.

monstertag:

very very silly Photoshop pun valentines

Molly started something amazing with her Photoshop pun valentines! The world needs more of them so you should add ‘em on below.

Peretz Partensky and her his friend had just had a dinner at a restaurant in San Francisco's SOMA district when they happened on an injured woman who had fallen off her bicycle. They called 911 and performed first aid while they waited for emergency services. When the police got there, they beat up Partensky's friend and detained him, and when Partensky objected, they cuffed, brutalized and arrested him. Injured and in an holding cell, she asked to see a doctor, and the SFPD deputies on duty at the jail stripped him naked and threw him in solitary confinement and marked him as a candidate for psychiatric evaluation.

Partensky complained to the SF Office of Citizen Complaints, documenting him plight in eye-watering detail (Partensky works for a company that supplies software to the restaurant on whose doorstep the entire incident took place, and they were happy to hand him CCTV footage of the incident). The entire procedure then went dark, because in San Francisco, you aren't allowed to know what happens to police officers who beat you up, thanks to the Public Safety Officers Procedural Bill of Rights.

One of the officers who harassed, beat, and wrongfully arrested Partensky, Paramjit Kaur, is already the subject of a civil rights suit. The other SFPD personnel who attacked and arrested the Good Samaritans are Officers Gerrans and Andreott.

For Partensky, the take-away message is clear: if you see someone who needs medical assistance, don't call 911, because the police might come and beat you up. Instead, help that person get to the hospital in a taxi.

In the hope that it might help some other idealistic, nerdy people from following me down that rabbit hole, I conclude with several public service announcements:

* Don’t call 911. Obviously, there are exceptions, but the sad lesson is, there are fewer than you’d think.

* Call Lyft to take you to the hospital. (Worked well when I broke my elbow.)

* Take such incidents to trial, where justice isn’t veiled by the POBAR. It’s not a matter of litigious vindictiveness. It’s just the only available way. The SF Office of Citizen Complaints is not a valid alternative.

* Consider wearing a video camera at all times. It has been shown that when police wear cameras and are aware of being filmed, it moderates their behavior. As self reports of the need to use force decrease, so do complaints.

Good Samaritan Backfire: or How I Ended Up in Solitary After Calling 911 for Help [Peretz Partensky/Medium]

Tom Perkins, the guy who got in trouble predicting the coming progressive Kristallnacht, has a new proposal: you get one vote for each dollar you pay in taxes.

Not that it's funny. But it's really like someone is doing a reductio ad absurdum experiment with the Stand Your Ground law in Florida: how close can you get to just pulling out your gun and blowing some kid's head off and still be able to even get into court with a 'stand your ground' defense. A Florida jury is now deliberates for a second day in the Michael Dunn 'loud music' case in which killer Michael Dunn responded with deadly force to loud music.

I want to share with you a pretty amazing development on the union activism front. We're used to right-to-work states resisting labor friendly legislation in their states. And major corporations usually resist unionization, at least within the bounds of the what the labor laws allow - and then often beyond them. But here in Tennessee we've got a case where the the corporation, Volkswagen, is not resisting unionization and perhaps actually mildly promoting it. In response, the state's politicians are coming in threatening to pull a series of tax incentives if Volkswagen doesn't change its tune and get on the anti-union bandwagon.

Seth Michaels explain what's at stake and why the Tennessee GOP political establishment is so adamant.

In 1839 the photographer Robert Cornelius was able to produce a daguerreotype of himself, becoming the first person who took a selfie. The term "selfie" came into the popular vernacular around 2002 as phones with cameras became more prevalent. Today, you can't go online without seeing someone you know post a photograph of themselves.

Why have selfies become such a thing? I have a theory. There's no "Dislike" button on Facebook. Or Instagram for that matter. And if you want to dislike something on Twitter the way you do that is by replying to that person with a statement of complaint. The way we have set up our social media tools is that you can post something to your friend group, like a photo of yourself, with the blanket expectation that you will get dozens of waves of positive feedback in the form of likes, comments, retweets, and hearts. In this cloud-based network we have built an impenetrable fortress of positive reinforcement.

Am I against people feeling validated? Heck no. But the people I see posting photo after photo of themselves are not always the ones I think are the most confident in who they are. I see someone doing that and think, "Oh, they really rely on external validation." Behind that is the (admittedly) judgmental thought, "Oh, I wonder how much they really love themselves."

In my most recent book, Walk Like a Buddha, I devote a full section to Buddhism, love, and romance. In this section I cover ten questions people have asked me over time, ranging from "How can I work with loneliness?" to "What's a Buddhist approach to online dating?" to "How do I hold my heart in the midst of a break-up?" Underlying these questions, and the plethora more I get from readers each week, lies a much simpler question: "How can I be at home with who I am, right now?"

Whether you are looking for love, struggling with a long-distance relationship, or nursing a broken heart, there's a certain level of discomfort that exists. Each of us has spent decades habituating ourselves to run from discomfort. We drink, or hook up, or shop, or post selfies. Anything to make us feel good about ourselves.

From a Buddhist perspective, we're never going to get truly comfortable. Even if you find a wonderful partner, the relationship might shift and end in a break-up or death. If you look to work for stability and comfort, you won't find it in today's economic situation. If you look to technology as a way to get comfy I have bad news: there's always going to be a new tech trend that will put what you have to shame. Things change, folks. Impermanence is part of the nature of reality. It's what the Buddha taught not because he was a great philosopher but because that's the way things are and he was able to see that.

What does all of this have to do with self-love? In my own experience, the times when I have felt the most discomfort, when I have had loved ones die, or gone through terrible break-ups, or been very ill, are the times when I had to look at my ability to love. I have had to contemplate what it means to love myself, even if I wasn't who I wanted to be in that moment. In those times, no selfie was going to save me. I couldn't look to external validation. It came down to me, lying on a bed, crippled by emotion, and asking that simple question I listed above: "How can I be at home with who I am, right now?"

For me, the answer has been equally simple. I meditate. I sit down on a cushion and practice calm-abiding meditation. One of the words for meditation in Tibetan is gom, which can be translated as become familiar with. Through the practice of returning to the breath, over and over again, I start to notice the way my mind works. I become more familiar with my mind, and thus befriend it. My teacher, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche, wrote an amazing guide to this practice with the apt title: Turning the Mind into an Ally. Through meditation we are learning to befriend our mind. We are learning to not struggle so much against who we are. We can embrace ourselves, as we are, in this moment. That is the power of meditation. That is what I mean by self-love.

The next time you feel uncomfortable, look to your own mind. Valentine's Day is coming up, and for many of us that brings up a wide range of emotional reactions. Don't flee from them. Don't take selfies and hope people will say you look good. Just rest with what you are feeling. Rest with who you are. Practice self-love this Valentine's Day.

A fear submitted by andthenwemetthelocals for deep-dark-fears.

So you had a bad day …

Charles Darwin read Lyell's “Principles of Geology Volume 1” while he was travelling on the Beagle, and when he returned to England they became close friends. Darwin vents to Lyell in this letter from 1861.

As Robert Krulwich has noted, it’s nice to know geniuses had bad days like the rest of us.  And it’s nice that they had friends to text correspond with when they did.

Happy Birthday Charles! And to the rest of you - Happy Darwin Day!

Jeff Vogel on what it’s like to put yourself out there, and what happened to Flappy Bird:

Dong Nguyen quit. A fortune coming through the door, and he walked away. …

Think about this. I mean you, personally. Think about what it would take to make you run from a gold mine like this. Really. Think about why someone would do this.

This is not about money.

Bingo.

Flappy Bird’s success was hilarious, but it also appears to be completely earned. I’ve read the posts suggesting he cheated at the ranks or reviews, but I haven’t seen any that supported those claims enough. Some guy in Vietnam made a primitive, crude, completely unoriginal game with cute, equally unoriginal artwork that was charming in its shittiness, frustratingly difficult, and inexplicably addictive.

A charming, comically shitty, addictive, accessible yet difficult, very casual, very quick to play, completely free game with no manipulative in-app purchases? Of course it succeeded in the App Store, fair and square.

Then so many people brutally harassed and abused the developer that he couldn’t take it anymore and deleted the number one app in the App Store in an attempt to do anything to make the abuse stop.

Flappy Bird was a cultural tragedy, and the tragedy has nothing to do with the game.

∞ Permalink

brutereason:

carpebutts:

buttermilkqueen:

subway??? no man this is domway. we tell you how you want your sandwich and u shut up and eat it.

Subway? No, this is Domway, where we ask you what things you like on your sandwich, what you don’t want, and what you’re thinking of trying and then help you come up with a combo that makes you happy.

If you want to feel the pain of jalapenos burning your mouth as you eat, we will take joy in making that happen and watching you squirm and reach for youe drink over and over. If you would simply like some comfort food in the form of some tuna salad, we’ll make that happen. And if you want to be told how we’re gonna make your sandwich instead of being asked about it, you’re still free to stop us at any time, because this is still your sandwich.

Domway: No CreepyDoms allowed. Eat fresh.

WIN.

Darkest Dungeon launched on Kickstarter and was immediately funded, which says a lot about how good its pitch is (it was also helped by a $15 price and a low funding target): it’s a handsome looking dungeon crawler, a roguelike in which the player must manage a team of dungeon delver’s psychological stress levels alongside their hit points. The darker it gets, the deeper you delve, the more likely the pressure is going to affect your team.
… [visit site to read more]

Paul Krugman has an interesting piece in which he argues that huge disparities in incomes undermine the dignity of the worst-paid workers. This sentence struck me most:

we live in the age of the angry billionaire, furious if anyone should suggest that his wealth doesn’t entitle him to acclamation as well as luxury.

On that topic, I’m inviting all American billionaires to attend a talk at the Stanford Center for Ethics in Society on Thursday where I will be arguing that the billionaire has a duty not to be rich. [If you’re not a billionaire, you’re equally welcome.] I think there are a couple of good arguments to give for this view, including arguments along the line that Chris wrote here recently. I’ve presented these arguments before to British, Dutch and mixed European audiences, and am curious whether the reactions of Americans will be different.

I’m prepared to be surprised. Even more so given a scene that happened on Sunday at a plantation in Louisiana that I visited, after a great tour in which I learnt a lot about the horrible conditions under which slaves had been working so that the plantation owners could build their wealth:

Me [asking a sales person in the plantation shop]: “How much should I tip the tour guide? What is the custom?”
Sales person: “Whatever you feel like.”
Me: “But I have no idea. I live in a country where we don’t tip anyone.”
Sales person: “Really? That’s not a good idea!”
Me: “We don’t tip because we pay decent wages.”
Sales person (with voice raised) “But that is socialism!”

Now if even an ordinary American, working on a former slavery plantation where he is every day reminded of a past of exploitation and gross violations of human dignity, believes that ‘decent wages’ implies ‘socialism’, then I start to understand that Krugman faces an uphill battle generating a reasonable debate about income inequality and human dignity. Let’s just hope that my encounter at the plantation wasn’t representative for the range of categories in which people are thinking.

Screenplay by Walter Campbell, novel by Michel Faber

An alien seductress preys upon hitchhikers in Scotland.

IMDB

Release Date: 4 April 2014 (USA)

The game this logo is for is multiplayer. It pits four players against one. The four are humans; the fifth is a giant monster. So they're evenly matched. This, everyone, is a brilliant logo. (The game sounds like it's pretty good, too.)

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hobbitdragon:

this photoset still amuses me every time