More Deep Thoughts with J Handy
I was going through the " why did I never use a neologisms tag before" tag of my journal, and found an entry from two years ago that I did not remember at all and would have believed had been a plant had an authoritative source told me so. My memory has always been terrible, so that got me to thinking: What if someone put fake entries in my journal to gaslight my sense of reality. Would I shrug and form plausible memories to rationalize the sight, or would I suspect shadowy villains?
* *
The Red Scare of the midcentury here in the United States didn't come completely out of nowhere, and the affiliations and/or sympathies of many prominent figures (such as Leonard Bernstein) with the commies shouldn't be construed as sympathies for the USSR or for the formal politico-economic ideology of communism per se. Rather, earlier in the 20th century, the capital C Communists in America had been the tribe for people who wanted all sorts of decent things disallowed by the social order, such as female rights, queer visibility, better conditions for working people, etc. The whole "death to capitalism!" spiel that we associate with communism today was a part of the fabric there, but, like a plaid pattern, it was present more so in some communist sympathizers than others. Then, in the midcentury, all of that civil rights and labor rights stuff was spun off into its own movements.
And so, today, when I saw yet another content creator mindlessly talk about the imminent demise of capitalism (usually, today's communist affiliations are worded as repudiations of capitalism rather than as explicit embracements of communism), I had a new thought: As more people reject "capitalism" and begin affiliating with communism-first jokingly, then only half-jokingly-it's not going to be that the "purity" of classical communism is going to lead these people into a new era of Soviet-style misadventures or even dogmatic Marxist economic ideologies. It's the label of communism itself that is going to give way, evolving to mean whatever the erf people who latch onto it in the 21st century want it to mean. I've been thinking about this all wrong, and hadn't considered that till now.
It's gonna piss off the communists something royal.
* *
Speaking of half-joking, this self-described autistic person going on an 18-minute rant that "the /hj tone indicator is worse than useless," complete with the impassioned, completely sincere line "[S]o, they simultaneously believe that it's a funny amount of orange juice and an unfunny amount of orange juice, which is a logical contradiction and perhaps a Type 5 Paradox," has got me thinking two deep thoughts:
First, it's strangely heartwarming to see the upcoming generations get worked up about "the kids these days" and "evolving slang" and all this kind of shit in their own idiosyncratic ways. I too was a grammar hardass once and delivered my own impassioned screeds. Seeing that the great tradition continues leaves me feeling like the world is in good hands. :3
Second, I really love nested tone indicators! /s /s /hj
=P
(It's actually entirely /jk, because I almost never use tone indicators, and when I do they're usually HTML element closing tags, because I am Old As Fuck.)
* *
No one asks me for my opinions on political stuff, so maybe there's no point in bothering, but hey: My journal, my rules. In that school shooting this week, the shooter was trans. (And, I didn't know this till today because I scarcely follow the news nowadays, but he was female-to-male trans, not the other way around as I had originally assumed. That's an important detail for various reasons.)
But, anyway: The murder of children in such a fashion is never justified. That's why I'm using the word "murder" to describe it here. This much can be said without commentary or qualification. I am not forgiving or excusing the shooter's actions or tactics writ large.
However, beyond that: The amount of red flags coming out of this story is as glaring as the noontide sun. Something was not right in that Christian school, and things were also not right in the shooter's home, between him and his parents. The fact that he was in his upper twenties really underscores the likelihood of long-term trauma.
Obviously, pending further information, no definitive conclusions can be drawn yet, but I am deeply inclined to suspect that the shooter was an abuse victim, most likely a long-term abuse victim, and that on some level he was acting in self-defense. I won't go so far as to say, yet, that the head of the school, who was killed in the shooting, had it coming, but that's where my suspicions lie, pending further information.
Christian schools are a blight on humanity. Most of you probably don't have a clue. But these are evil places that torment their victims without mercy, all while instilling them with lies and hatred to last a lifetime. Not all of these schools are terrible all of the time, and obviously not all of the people in them are terrible, but on the whole they do so much evil in the world. Tennessee is one of those states that is sinking further and further into the fascist abyss, and I find myself in the strange position of interpreting this shooting differently from most school shootings. I still see it as tragic, yes, but also as karmic.
You probably will not be surprised. Most of my fiction, after all, is full of the cathartic killing of evil people. I firmly hold that many of our human kin out there deserve to die for the horrible crimes they commit. Those like me who don't want to die by cop or spend life in prison don't have the luxury of doing something about it in the real world, but, like many artists and philosophers and ideologues before me, I can channel my sense of justice into storytelling in the hopes of winning hearts and minds that may otherwise be lost to the hazes of evil. I can encourage people to fight back against their oppressors, and perhaps once in a while can even persuade evil people to have an awakening.
I saw an interesting idea recently, namely that "intolerance of intolerance" is not an ethical quandary but a contingency action that occurs when the social contract is broken. While I don't actually agree with the dichotomy asserted here-I think there is an ethical dimension-I love this framing nevertheless, because it very cleanly addresses the common obfuscatory tactic raised by bad actors that goes something like: "Claiming that others should be killed makes you no better than them." That's horseshit. I think our society, in its simple-minded love of the vilification of the concept of a double standard, has lost its grip on the fact that one standard will naturally lead to different outcomes based on different inputs. It's very different to destroy or condemn those who destroy lives than it is to condemn or destroy the innocent. And to condemn or destroy the innocent indisputably is a violation of the social contract-meriting whatever level of recourse the aggrieved deem necessary. That's exactly why it is so important for the systems of our society, both legal and social, to strive to become more just: Our peaceful existence depends upon their justness. When people feel that they have no civil alternative to escape their torment, that's when violence happens.
I am glad the shooter was killed. Definitely the best outcome for him. Now he can rest in peace. But his actions will have a double-edged consequence: It will give aid and comfort to the forces of fascism, who have already seized upon trans folk as one of their primary scapegoats, serving the role that "the Jews" did to the Nazis. But, on the other side, it will teach at least some trans people, and other queer folk, that they are not powerless, that they can fight back against their torment in many ways. My blessing for them is a straightforward them: May the paths they blaze for themselves be far more victorious, and far less gruesome, and may their paths leave room for they themselves to flourish and thrive. May their triumphs come through organizing, art, confidence, and solidarity, and only as a last resort through violence.
* *
Finally, I had a dream a few days ago that included two memorable moments. (Yes, I am dumping a dream on you.)
First, at one point my disembodied narrative POV was sliding across a large green between some ornate buildings, in what reminds me now of an academic campus. Along the way, I glided past a tree, and I remember looking at the tree as it passed and thinking that it was amazing that my mind can generate such fine details in imagery while I'm dreaming. This is a thought I have had many times while awake, but I have never had as a real-time observation during a pseudo-lucid dream before ("pseudo" because I was aware I was dreaming but not aware of "myself" and thus unable to assert control).
And it was correct: The tree was vividly detailed. This is important because I have wondered just how much of the detail in my dreams is actually there, versus how much is my brain telling me that it's there. A good example would be, say, a dream poem. Is it actually good, or am I merely made to think that it is good? Well, while visual imagery is not necessarily relevant to other types of information, this tree definitely was vividly and intricately detailed, down to the veins in the leaves-and there were hundreds and more likely thousands of leaves. Obviously my brain was not loading individual leaves; it was generated "a tree." But the fact that I specifically looked at individual leaves for the details in them, and got those details...that was pretty cool and strikes me as an important data point in my further understanding of the workings of the mind.
The other moment came shortly thereafter. I was again gliding, this time along a curvy road in a hilly desert neighborhood reminiscent of where I grew up. The hill afforded me a great view, which I was immensely enjoying. Then, as my trollish brain often does, I began skittering off the left side of the road, as if to fall off the hill. But I was like "No! I am enjoying this view too much. Screw that." So I stayed on the road. And for that, I got to enjoy a couple more seconds of this lovely imagery.
Then, ahead of me, everything ended in a gigantic chasm with a bottomless brown abyss. The road ended with a T-intersection, and I could have gone left or right, but I didn't: I went straight ahead and over the cliff.
It goes to show that my dream brain, once it gets an intent in mind, is loath to be dislodged from it. It also goes to show that the "point" (for my brain) of certain kinds of dreams that offer lovely views and adventures-flying is the archetypal great examples, which for me is most commonly in an airplane-is not the beauty or the adventure: It's to set up some kind of a fall.
But what was interesting about this one is that I was still pseudo-lucid-dreaming. I chose to go off the cliff, and, when I did, I was mainly just vaguely annoyed. It was only once I made a further deliberate decision to accept the dream logic that I was falling that I was suddenly hit with a jolt of adrenaline and bolted awake. Sort of like in the cartoons. "We doing this? Really? Sigh... Okay. AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
Ah, the mind is a mysterious place...
* *
Finally finally, last week I put on my fat-bender hat and fat-bent one of my ATH characters. Believe it or not there are not nearly enough of them, and I still have representation improvements to make in that department. So, anyway, I got the idea to fat-bend Appeline Vanegannix, and I was instantly enraptured by the idea. I spent several days trying it on in my mind, but then I sat down to revise some of her scenes, and it really worked! It added something to the character (pun intended). She's been slim from the very beginning, about 23 years, but now she be wide. Or, more to the point of today's theme: deep.
* *
The Red Scare of the midcentury here in the United States didn't come completely out of nowhere, and the affiliations and/or sympathies of many prominent figures (such as Leonard Bernstein) with the commies shouldn't be construed as sympathies for the USSR or for the formal politico-economic ideology of communism per se. Rather, earlier in the 20th century, the capital C Communists in America had been the tribe for people who wanted all sorts of decent things disallowed by the social order, such as female rights, queer visibility, better conditions for working people, etc. The whole "death to capitalism!" spiel that we associate with communism today was a part of the fabric there, but, like a plaid pattern, it was present more so in some communist sympathizers than others. Then, in the midcentury, all of that civil rights and labor rights stuff was spun off into its own movements.
And so, today, when I saw yet another content creator mindlessly talk about the imminent demise of capitalism (usually, today's communist affiliations are worded as repudiations of capitalism rather than as explicit embracements of communism), I had a new thought: As more people reject "capitalism" and begin affiliating with communism-first jokingly, then only half-jokingly-it's not going to be that the "purity" of classical communism is going to lead these people into a new era of Soviet-style misadventures or even dogmatic Marxist economic ideologies. It's the label of communism itself that is going to give way, evolving to mean whatever the erf people who latch onto it in the 21st century want it to mean. I've been thinking about this all wrong, and hadn't considered that till now.
It's gonna piss off the communists something royal.
* *
Speaking of half-joking, this self-described autistic person going on an 18-minute rant that "the /hj tone indicator is worse than useless," complete with the impassioned, completely sincere line "[S]o, they simultaneously believe that it's a funny amount of orange juice and an unfunny amount of orange juice, which is a logical contradiction and perhaps a Type 5 Paradox," has got me thinking two deep thoughts:
First, it's strangely heartwarming to see the upcoming generations get worked up about "the kids these days" and "evolving slang" and all this kind of shit in their own idiosyncratic ways. I too was a grammar hardass once and delivered my own impassioned screeds. Seeing that the great tradition continues leaves me feeling like the world is in good hands. :3
Second, I really love nested tone indicators! /s /s /hj
=P
(It's actually entirely /jk, because I almost never use tone indicators, and when I do they're usually HTML element closing tags, because I am Old As Fuck.)
* *
No one asks me for my opinions on political stuff, so maybe there's no point in bothering, but hey: My journal, my rules. In that school shooting this week, the shooter was trans. (And, I didn't know this till today because I scarcely follow the news nowadays, but he was female-to-male trans, not the other way around as I had originally assumed. That's an important detail for various reasons.)
But, anyway: The murder of children in such a fashion is never justified. That's why I'm using the word "murder" to describe it here. This much can be said without commentary or qualification. I am not forgiving or excusing the shooter's actions or tactics writ large.
However, beyond that: The amount of red flags coming out of this story is as glaring as the noontide sun. Something was not right in that Christian school, and things were also not right in the shooter's home, between him and his parents. The fact that he was in his upper twenties really underscores the likelihood of long-term trauma.
Obviously, pending further information, no definitive conclusions can be drawn yet, but I am deeply inclined to suspect that the shooter was an abuse victim, most likely a long-term abuse victim, and that on some level he was acting in self-defense. I won't go so far as to say, yet, that the head of the school, who was killed in the shooting, had it coming, but that's where my suspicions lie, pending further information.
Christian schools are a blight on humanity. Most of you probably don't have a clue. But these are evil places that torment their victims without mercy, all while instilling them with lies and hatred to last a lifetime. Not all of these schools are terrible all of the time, and obviously not all of the people in them are terrible, but on the whole they do so much evil in the world. Tennessee is one of those states that is sinking further and further into the fascist abyss, and I find myself in the strange position of interpreting this shooting differently from most school shootings. I still see it as tragic, yes, but also as karmic.
You probably will not be surprised. Most of my fiction, after all, is full of the cathartic killing of evil people. I firmly hold that many of our human kin out there deserve to die for the horrible crimes they commit. Those like me who don't want to die by cop or spend life in prison don't have the luxury of doing something about it in the real world, but, like many artists and philosophers and ideologues before me, I can channel my sense of justice into storytelling in the hopes of winning hearts and minds that may otherwise be lost to the hazes of evil. I can encourage people to fight back against their oppressors, and perhaps once in a while can even persuade evil people to have an awakening.
I saw an interesting idea recently, namely that "intolerance of intolerance" is not an ethical quandary but a contingency action that occurs when the social contract is broken. While I don't actually agree with the dichotomy asserted here-I think there is an ethical dimension-I love this framing nevertheless, because it very cleanly addresses the common obfuscatory tactic raised by bad actors that goes something like: "Claiming that others should be killed makes you no better than them." That's horseshit. I think our society, in its simple-minded love of the vilification of the concept of a double standard, has lost its grip on the fact that one standard will naturally lead to different outcomes based on different inputs. It's very different to destroy or condemn those who destroy lives than it is to condemn or destroy the innocent. And to condemn or destroy the innocent indisputably is a violation of the social contract-meriting whatever level of recourse the aggrieved deem necessary. That's exactly why it is so important for the systems of our society, both legal and social, to strive to become more just: Our peaceful existence depends upon their justness. When people feel that they have no civil alternative to escape their torment, that's when violence happens.
I am glad the shooter was killed. Definitely the best outcome for him. Now he can rest in peace. But his actions will have a double-edged consequence: It will give aid and comfort to the forces of fascism, who have already seized upon trans folk as one of their primary scapegoats, serving the role that "the Jews" did to the Nazis. But, on the other side, it will teach at least some trans people, and other queer folk, that they are not powerless, that they can fight back against their torment in many ways. My blessing for them is a straightforward them: May the paths they blaze for themselves be far more victorious, and far less gruesome, and may their paths leave room for they themselves to flourish and thrive. May their triumphs come through organizing, art, confidence, and solidarity, and only as a last resort through violence.
* *
Finally, I had a dream a few days ago that included two memorable moments. (Yes, I am dumping a dream on you.)
First, at one point my disembodied narrative POV was sliding across a large green between some ornate buildings, in what reminds me now of an academic campus. Along the way, I glided past a tree, and I remember looking at the tree as it passed and thinking that it was amazing that my mind can generate such fine details in imagery while I'm dreaming. This is a thought I have had many times while awake, but I have never had as a real-time observation during a pseudo-lucid dream before ("pseudo" because I was aware I was dreaming but not aware of "myself" and thus unable to assert control).
And it was correct: The tree was vividly detailed. This is important because I have wondered just how much of the detail in my dreams is actually there, versus how much is my brain telling me that it's there. A good example would be, say, a dream poem. Is it actually good, or am I merely made to think that it is good? Well, while visual imagery is not necessarily relevant to other types of information, this tree definitely was vividly and intricately detailed, down to the veins in the leaves-and there were hundreds and more likely thousands of leaves. Obviously my brain was not loading individual leaves; it was generated "a tree." But the fact that I specifically looked at individual leaves for the details in them, and got those details...that was pretty cool and strikes me as an important data point in my further understanding of the workings of the mind.
The other moment came shortly thereafter. I was again gliding, this time along a curvy road in a hilly desert neighborhood reminiscent of where I grew up. The hill afforded me a great view, which I was immensely enjoying. Then, as my trollish brain often does, I began skittering off the left side of the road, as if to fall off the hill. But I was like "No! I am enjoying this view too much. Screw that." So I stayed on the road. And for that, I got to enjoy a couple more seconds of this lovely imagery.
Then, ahead of me, everything ended in a gigantic chasm with a bottomless brown abyss. The road ended with a T-intersection, and I could have gone left or right, but I didn't: I went straight ahead and over the cliff.
It goes to show that my dream brain, once it gets an intent in mind, is loath to be dislodged from it. It also goes to show that the "point" (for my brain) of certain kinds of dreams that offer lovely views and adventures-flying is the archetypal great examples, which for me is most commonly in an airplane-is not the beauty or the adventure: It's to set up some kind of a fall.
But what was interesting about this one is that I was still pseudo-lucid-dreaming. I chose to go off the cliff, and, when I did, I was mainly just vaguely annoyed. It was only once I made a further deliberate decision to accept the dream logic that I was falling that I was suddenly hit with a jolt of adrenaline and bolted awake. Sort of like in the cartoons. "We doing this? Really? Sigh... Okay. AAAAAAAAHHHH!!!"
Ah, the mind is a mysterious place...
* *
Finally finally, last week I put on my fat-bender hat and fat-bent one of my ATH characters. Believe it or not there are not nearly enough of them, and I still have representation improvements to make in that department. So, anyway, I got the idea to fat-bend Appeline Vanegannix, and I was instantly enraptured by the idea. I spent several days trying it on in my mind, but then I sat down to revise some of her scenes, and it really worked! It added something to the character (pun intended). She's been slim from the very beginning, about 23 years, but now she be wide. Or, more to the point of today's theme: deep.