ZiwaNews seems to be a pro-States propaganda outlet, but since I can’t read or hear it fluently, I can only speculate. Why would a legitimate news source do this? Why not be honest about the date and location of the event? What about the case being made, by this video, is not strong enough without lying about the time and place?

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On 12/2/22, @ZawiaNews tweeted:

“video was taken in Takhar Province and it shows several armed

Taliban stoning women for going out to shop without Muharram.

https://twitter.com/i/status/1598324324225662978”

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On 12/2/22, replying to: @Zawia News and @hrw; @DanJDove tweeted:

“This is from here – Jan, 2020

‘On 1/23/20, @HeshmatAlavi tweeted:

“Taliban members punishing women for leaving their home alone.

Reports indicate this is Kunduz province in northeast Afghanistan

https://twitter.com/i/status/1220360091997757441”’”

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When this happens, it is priming. Something is coming that is not what it seems.

Comedian Louis C.K. once described walking by a barrel of duck vaginas, during his travels. Rather, while trying to walk by, the barrel of duck vagina’s arrested him and he survived to tell the tale: went on to live in infamy for something else.

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In a book from a friend, the dedication reads: “For the confused and longing”. What a bag of dicks. Someone needs a little Dead Bear in their lives. Ffs. The author uses the word “we” a lot; as if all people, that are not her, are some version of her past-self – before she went on her journey to enlighten us all. This myopic vanity is not her singular invention, or possession. Too often, people do not know how to speak for themselves and make social critique. In this manner of speaking, society, the mass, is an emotionally driven herd, after Bernays’s own heart, of which the speaker is now the singularly freed, former prisoner-philosopher. She projects:

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Again, speak for your damn self.

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Read a quote somewhere that said something like: “focusing on lifestyle choices and self-improvement takes the focus off of the industrialists and the capitalists who have the power to make substantial changes.” or something to that effect. Pretty sure it was Jensen, but I couldn’t find it again, so I’m cherry-paraphrasing.

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Confronting, but impeccable letter.

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It presumes neither action, nor intent. It simply states that if there is this shared goal, then, to that end, there is a better method than this oft attempted one. If there was another reason for self-improvement or lifestyle choice, it was not derided, though it was implied that saving the planet is why people do yoga, with plausible deniability.

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The spirit is missing.

10

What is the difference between access and understanding? For me, the answer is usually asking. For too many, the answer appears to be that they are the same thing. Ask any servant.

Naomi Shihab Nye wrote:

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She said that you have to lose things before you can know kindness. In bad faith, the poem presupposes that people aren’t born with any. In good faith, I know that it describes the manner of deepening an understanding in an overwhelmingly hostile environment. It’s hard not to agree, for who I would like to think I have grown into, but I have known plenty of folks whose losses cost them what kindness they had. I argue that walkabouts are a better method. I wonder if solitary, right-of-passage, vision quests weren’t, in many respects, about getting to know your relationship, not to nature (in which, presumably, the querent would be already immersed), but to human society. Some people do okay without it. They don’t thrive in frequent, prolonged contact with many people. Some do. I happen to not, even so, I still feel the conflicted relief of distant city lights when I travel (which I hate doing). What must an extrovert feel? Even if I asked, would it be possible for me to know, understand, or imagine?

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Suffering can give you the opportunity to become a better person, but it is not a requirement.

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If an environment is deleterious to your natural state, it is harmful, but if it doesn’t kill you, you will adapt; this is conditioning. People do it in different ways. Some people, trusting the environment, will believe that the onus is on them: that nature (the environment) is the arbiter of life and must be adapted to. Others will see the human environment (society), superimposed over the natural world, as a harmful set of conditions to be resisted and adapt to resist it as well as they are able. Still others will see humans as an extension of nature and society as a mass of which they are a culturally responsible party; they will adapt to cooperate. Many will observe all, or some, or none of the above statements as part of their lives. People are different. They cannot be all grouped together just because Freud’s nephew said so and enough people were acclimated to a sick society to convince some guys that this was a good way to make lots of money. Is the mighty Bristlecone merely a damaged family because it is not the Ponderosa, or have they adapted to wind speeds, sun-glare and a bitter cold that many Ponderosa will never know? Are Jack Pines a bunch of messy bitches who live for drama, or have they, like Aspens, learned to negotiate life from fire in different ways?

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In the famous Milgram obedience study, people were observed to comply with authoritarian commands far more often than not. They were not asked what authority meant to them, how they learned it, or in what conditions. During the time of that study, corporal punishment was a widely accepted practice. It was eighteen years after the Second World War, ten years after the Korean War, and the Vietnam War had been going on for eight years. There were still active residential schools (the last closed when I was in middle school), whose residences’ bones speak to, not only the racism of intent, but the level of obedience required of children. Compulsory education wasn’t invented for Americans, but by parliament, to create industrial workers. But, it worked, so the States’ government adopted it. “And everybody made all the money.” is the story I keep hearing everyone bicker with, but not everyone was told this one and for sure, not everyone believes it. Doesn’t stop a whole lotta’ recent converts from asserting a buncha’ shit they just figured out at strangers who have just been there, quietly knowing it similar the whole time, like it’s some kinda’ revelation. Nor does it keep some of the few, exposed beacons from regularly assuming that everyone who agrees with them, about a thing, is somehow their invention; that they are not whole other people, capable of reasonable dissent or worthy contribution, but endlessly exploitable minions. Talk about paternalism. Colonialism. Too often, presenters speak to their friendly audiences as if they were speaking to enemies and friendliness is mistaken for complete agreement. How priestly: as if all pay fealty to varied constellations of thought-lords who deign grace us; but articulation only helps contribute language to what was already felt. For the friendly, if privileged, critics who don’t know: not all people who figure things out on their own want to be known, seek acclaim, get credit, or have the means to commune among people with whom they might agree on anything.

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In good faith, I really think that most of the time, folks do the very best they can in impossible situations. Sometimes situations can overtake people; not because they’re true believers, but because they don’t want to lose someone, or something they value. Sometimes it’s kids. Sometimes it’s life or limb. Lots of people have to make impossible decisions.

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Just as having a social advantage doesn’t exempt one from the possibility of experiencing abuse, dictate a desire for power, or will to lord it over (ask the ghost of John Brown, who died well, as a good man), neither does experiencing oppression foreclose the possibility of one being abusive, or having authority (ask the ghost of Nat Turner, who died as free as the envy of any old Viking); but, I think it is easier for people in positions of power to believe in concepts of self-image. Sociologically speaking, conditioning does not concern philosophy as much as behavior. Not to say they are unrelated, but lots of people will do opposite things for the same reason and vice versa. It is easier for an oppressor to believe that their hard work and goodness made them worthy in ways that some other people just seem to know that they themselves are not. Anecdotally, I can testify that my fleeting Imposters’ Syndrome (when breathlessly sharing a platform with Chris Hedges) was not about self-worth, but my remaining faith that others would find me valuable. Plenty of people have every reason to believe that they are not externally valued. That is not their projection: it is an understanding bestowed upon them by their conditions, in society. I don’t presume to know what people may, or may not, think about themselves internally, but I imagine that it is a great deal more varied than their behavior.

When someone is arrogant, vain, glib, or just plain awful, it doesn’t make them wrong about things. It just makes them awful.  But, I must say: arrogance has only ever stifled my ability to ask questions that were either successfully leading, or from which I learned something. It doesn’t necessarily make one wrong: just immune to the knowledge of one’s ignorance. Too many folks conflate people of whom they are ignorant, with those other people’s ignorance of themselves: an ageless vanity. I contend that anyone who tries to stifle your thoughts is not your friend and that not everyone who disagrees with you is your enemy. In my blip of experience, arrogance is, for good reason, associated with youth, but humility, the great underrated, is something enforced on children, that only a wise few grow into. Even a worst enemy is usually right about something. My policy is to listen to everyone and believe no one; that’s what m’thinky-thoughts are for. I think it’s a good policy to try to live up to, even when I get tired of hearing very similar things; they are not the same and besides: I know I wouldn’t want to be dismissed that way.

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On 1/7/23, @JDaviesPhD tweeted:

“Framing difficult emotional/behavioural reactions to adversity or unmet needs as

‘symptoms’ of some non-existent biological psych-pathology, has become so embedded

in our culture that the vast majority do not even know there's anything to question.

This is pure ideology at work.”

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On 1/8/23, @DrJessTaylor tweeted:

“Maybe the WORLD is sick and ‘disordered’, and HUMANS are simply trying to respond

to a terrifying, abusive, unpredictable environment in which they are forced to perform

fake, controlled, repetitive roles, whilst working & consuming harmful, unnecessary shit

til they die?”

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1/14/23

This morning, I was gifted this:

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On 1/14/23, replying to: @MeghanEMurphy, @trinitylafey, @Count_WomenUSA, @GoodMenProject; @dcareydiamond tweeted:

“‘Gail Dines points out that we are in the midst of the largest unregulated social science

experiment in history ...’ Robert Jensen 10 Questions for Radical Feminist Robert Jensen

https://counter-currents.com/2022/02/10-questions-for-radical-feminist-robert-jensen/”

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wherein Jensen interspersed the magic words:

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Talk about some morphic resonance; Doctor Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, eat your heart out. Last year, around that time, I was putting the finishing touches on a poem that mentions these very specific things, in way too similar ways. The same thing happened with a Hedges article, same poem. It was freaky; and also, I was a little miffed, ‘cause I knew that no one would believe it. It is hard for me to see this as a strict matter of timing, so much as a bunch of scatterlings sharing the truth of one objective reality and trying very hard to communicate it from inside the disparate cells of a bad faith institution.

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Eight years after the obedience study, Zimbardo conducted his prison experiment at Stanford. He said of it:

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Not knowing for sure, I must guess that, by breakdown, he meant crying (which I recently heard likened to vomiting, as far as its social unacceptability). I have to ask, what kind of society feeds you poison and then derides you for upchucking it? Are you then, in your essence of being, suffering from a digestive illness, or have you just been poisoned? Was the young man, referenced above, indeed broken, or was he honestly expressing his feelings (something a broken person would be incapable of doing; don’t believe me; ask yourself: what is the point of corporal punishment)?

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Utah Philips once shared:

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I think he was onto something. Deriding children for being is not an argument: it is trying to shame someone out of making one by attacking the timing and experience of their character. When this happens, it is harmful to both the spirit and the letter of debate. If things were so obvious, they wouldn’t need saying, but I would ask: what about the case being made is not self-evident enough, without being awful?

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In the most recent of her wonderful books, Gerlich bravely offers a useful critique of frequently attempted methods of achieving a few widespread, common goals; but not all people want the same things.

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At the conclusion of her most recent book, Dr. Taylor assumes that she has changed the minds of her readers 180º from what they thought before reading:

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It’s straight up insufferable, but the premise of the work was spot on. A whole bunch of people already agreed with it, before she came along to give the proposition another strong advocate by developing it more, in her own way, which is why a good many supporters bought her book in the first place: for argument’s sake, in furtherance of a mutual cause. Is she failing because she is not how I want her to be?

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Generally, my unsolicited advice is: when presenting an idea to the public, it’s best to keep in mind that you don’t know who you’re talking to and then to make no presumptions. Why not trust your audience? Maybe they will stick around and be trustworthy if neither bullied, nor patronized? Why not speak to the people who came to hear you, instead of letting the people who aren’t really listening poison and dictate the manner of your speech? Maybe speaking to people as if they were your personal trolls is a self-fulfilling prophesy? Why not aim for admirers? Maybe talking down to the whole of humanity is a sure tell of something that shouldn’t outlive youth? What do you think?

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Gerlich, Renee. Out of the Fog: On Politics, Feminism and Coming Alive. Spinifex Press, 2022.

Shihab Nye, Naomi. “Kindness,” 1952. Words Under the Words: Selected Poems. Far Corner Books, 1995.

Collins, Hubert. “10 Questions for Radical Feminist Robert Jensen”. Counter-Current, 2022.

Zimbardo, Philip. “The Psychology of Evil”. TED Talk, 2014.

Philips, Utah & Difranco, Ani. “Natural Resources”. the past didn’t go anywhere. Righteous Babe Records, 1996.

Taylor, Jessica, Dr. Sexy but Psycho: How the Patriarchy Uses Women’s Trauma Against Them. Constable, 2022.