tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9879379465907720582024-03-27T02:37:21.714-04:00Dead Men BloggingHistory and philosophy. Caution: It's alive!Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.comBlogger203125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-31367558031489121812024-03-26T20:00:00.006-04:002024-03-26T20:00:00.144-04:00'Testament: The Story of Moses' (Netflix)<p><a href="https://www.netflix.com/title/81341795" target="_blank">Testament: The Story of Moses</a> is a series about the life of Moses, coming to Netflix on March 27.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-oGQ4wtTKmJGZMVcGRdXY8DgzM6Hte7FdGLzuwvLe9py7Vo54a_XhqhS2nfbESwOl2Se8-Sgj8KJaLsiFXVHWeE6cBrmDUGsSOOmusI3Cw71uOqMF0_bhec3S4YDcLoQ_kW9-0yytOUSdaLnqCYhyphenhyphenW-lfwo0ttJHgtfe6QEWo34hdrq-ppZ1Xvlwa4g/s1600/moses.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="parting of the Red Sea, the promo graphic on Netflix" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU-oGQ4wtTKmJGZMVcGRdXY8DgzM6Hte7FdGLzuwvLe9py7Vo54a_XhqhS2nfbESwOl2Se8-Sgj8KJaLsiFXVHWeE6cBrmDUGsSOOmusI3Cw71uOqMF0_bhec3S4YDcLoQ_kW9-0yytOUSdaLnqCYhyphenhyphenW-lfwo0ttJHgtfe6QEWo34hdrq-ppZ1Xvlwa4g/s1600/moses.png"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-68096083774540439722024-03-24T19:04:00.004-04:002024-03-24T19:04:54.743-04:001931: U.S. railroad deaths<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7gMjdL8p-2HnCtcsyBKdTHiq1gIM2yUxk3eI_u-dmd6-vJGoRB_qD9EJEoA2JJXv3JtS196mYGGDmN1QPXAoLiJWnMYFJi3UOD9Y0G47A5bbCfx_GGZ3igm0HplydOWIvsdIYaFQvMYLpNUeNvBUhPUbYyT1klwNept2CcN9Z-zzwCiFWGu-rKRHlzpI/s1600/forest.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="trees in mist" border="0" width="75%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7gMjdL8p-2HnCtcsyBKdTHiq1gIM2yUxk3eI_u-dmd6-vJGoRB_qD9EJEoA2JJXv3JtS196mYGGDmN1QPXAoLiJWnMYFJi3UOD9Y0G47A5bbCfx_GGZ3igm0HplydOWIvsdIYaFQvMYLpNUeNvBUhPUbYyT1klwNept2CcN9Z-zzwCiFWGu-rKRHlzpI/s1600/forest.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>Pauli Murray writes in <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781631494581" target="_blank">Song in a Weary Throat: Memoir of an American Pilgrimage</a></i> (Chapter 7, Survival):</p>
<blockquote><p>"I did not know in that psring of 1931 that I was about to join an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 homeless boys — and a smattering of girls — between the ages of twelve and twenty, products of the Depression, who rode freights or hitchhiked from town to town in search of work. Thousands lived in 'jungles' near railroad tracks, constituting the 'tragic army' which aroused the alarm of the Children's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor, and created a national problem which eventually led to the establishment of the Civilian Conservation Corps. These young people were part of a larger army of nearly three million homeless unemployed men who also rode the rails and lived in jungles. One railroad official reported that some ten thousand transients per month were traveling through the Southern Pacific freight yards in 1931. In the same year, 831 were killed on the arterial highways and dozens met their deaths under freight trains.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Hoboes faced the ever-present risk of being shot by armed railroad guards in the big railroad divisions where the freight trains were assembled. When the long trains pulled out of the yards, we had to choose between two dangers. If we ignored the guards who shouted warnings to stay off the train as they ran along the walkways on top of the cars, we became targets for their bullets. If we waited for them to get off, the train had picked up such speed that we risked being thrown under the wheels trying to swing onto a fast-moving boxcar. Another hazard was the fierce cold of windy nights, which forced us to try to keep warm by riding too close to the engine, in the path of hot cinders that blew back upon us. One night the only shelter from the wind I could find was on a flatcar loaded with bridge timber. I crawled into a crevice covered by lon wooden beams and went to sleep. Next morning I discovered that the heavy beams shifted every time the train lurched and this shifting had provided my crevice; a strong enough lurch would have dislodged some of the heaviest beams and crushed me to death.</p>
<p>Crossing the country, I learned to ride cattle trains, fruit-butter-and-egg trains, 'hot shots' (fast express freights), and 'manifestos' (nonstop express freight trains). When refrigerator cars carried citrus fruit, the narrow ice chests, or 'reefers,' at each end of the car were left empty. The hobo's haven was an open reefer which could be entered through the small trapdoor at the top of the empty ice chamber. The upraised door was held by a jack, and if one was small enough to wriggle through the opening one could slither down inside the steel-plated cell floored with wooden slats and ride in comfort out of sight of railroad 'bulls.'"</p></blockquote>
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Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-74990215201016223182024-03-17T12:26:00.002-04:002024-03-17T12:27:22.401-04:00Virginia, 1629: An incident in intersex & trans history<p>In 1623 — as Kit Heyam writes in <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781541605404" target="_blank">Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender</a></i> — Warraskoyack, Virginia, "an English colonial settlement, on Powhatan land," had a population of "twenty-nine white and four Black people." This included a person named Thomas Hall, who worked as a servant to two men. Hall's story was that they had grown up as a girl in England, then dressed as a young man to fight on the Île de Ré in the 1620s, then resumed employment as a woman in needlework for a few years before sailing for America in 1627.</p>
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<p>The small community in Warraskoyack had differing opinions of Hall's gender, which seems not to have been a problem for about a year, but in early 1629 became the subject of debate and investigation when Hall was said to be having sex with a person known as "great Bess," who was a maid to a plantation manager. Hall also wore women's clothing and claimed to like sex with men too.</p>
<p>Heyam writes that, in 1629, "around one third of the Warraskoyack population had directly involved themselves in the task of establishing whether the person they knew as Thomas was 'man or woman'." Hall, when asked directly, asserted that they were both. One of Hall's employers likewise answered that he believed Hall to be both. The community then "sought to prove the 'truth' of Thomas(ine)'s gender by inspecting their genitals repeatedly and violently." No one agreed whether Hall's genitals were male or female, and "the case was passed to the Jamestown court," which decided that Hall should be treated as both "a man and a woman."</p>
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<p>Heyam points out that "intersex bodies have always been made to stand for more than they are: for God's judgement, for hte supernatural or monstrous, for threats to the patriarchal order. People whose intersex traits are obvious have rarely been able to fly under the radar. While trans history is often hidden behind ambiguous motivations for gender-nonconforming behaviour, intersex history is often violently laid bare before an invasive medical, religious or literary gaze." Unfortunately, some "trans people have appropriated intersex traits and identities to validate our genders or access medical treatment." Nonetheless there are some similarities between trans and intersex experience, including that "medical and legal professionals" try to interfere and to change trans and intersex people's bodies against their wishes. "The same doctors who were keen to change intersex bodies, which they saw as in need of 'correction', were reluctant to help trans people, whose problems they understood as psychological, not physical." Some people therefore asserted that they were intersex because it was a way for them to seek hormones and surgeries.</p>
<p>The life of Thomas Hall can be seen as part of intersex history, trans history, or both.</p>
<p>Please do check out the book <i>Before We Were Trans</i> because it is full of insightful ideas like this.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-52943930567539524532024-03-15T14:11:00.008-04:002024-03-25T22:08:45.422-04:00Measurements and categories<p>On the anarchist geographer Élisée Reclus (1830-1905). Philosophy of nature can discuss</p>
<blockquote>"the need for a hybrid vision of environments that does not separate what is 'natural' from what is 'human,' and that abandons environmental determinism by focusing on the complex interactions in which spatial frameworks are not simply a context, but fully-fledged actors in the history—one that is essentially an environmental history and cannot be separated, as Reclus would have said, from geography. With regard to ethics, the fact that human beings are part of nature also limits their pretentions to domination over it."<br>
Federico Ferretti (translated by Arby Gharibian) « <a href="https://ehne.fr/en/node/12274" target="_blank">Élisée Reclus: A Philosophy of Nature</a> », Encyclopédie d'histoire numérique de l'Europe [online], ISSN 2677-6588, published on 22/Jun/2020, consulted on 09/Aug/2023.</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"When we ask what makes something a sandwich we should also ask why we need to know, and who we are. The "we" is a culturally specific we. The type of handheld that is a sandwich has a lineage and it is a cultural one. That cultural lineage informs the conditions under which it can be used, so in that way informs its function. Then the question is why we are asking the question. Why do we want to know? What hinges on the answer? That is going to guide us in making our question more precise. What is our purpose?"<br>
— Ásta, Professor of Philosophy, Duke University, quoted in <a href="https://buttondown.email/theswordandthesandwich/archive/notable-sandwiches-89-hot-dog/" target="_blank">Notable Sandwiches #89: Hot Dog</a>, Talia Lavin, The Sword and the Sandwich, March 15, 2024</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"Beginning in the late 18th century, 'Is X a Y' was asked about entire categories of human beings who had previously been excluded from the category of rational political actors (Jews, women, people of color, etc.), and the world we now live in was shaped by the destabilisation that question produced in the minds of the people who asked it; in many ways we are still suffering from the after effects."<br>
Alana Vincent, Associate Professor, Religious Studies, Umeå University, Sweden, also quoted by Talia Lavin in the same post</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"Polymer chemists use the Kawabata Evaluation System, a set of extremely precise instruments developed at Kyoto University that measure the subtlest properties of textiles—the ones associated with what the Wilson College of Textiles at NC State calls 'comfort perception.' By manipulating fabrics and exerting exceedingly low force on them, Kawabata instruments gather data sets including stretch, rigidity, compression, and surface friction on human skin. Of these, compression (thickness and loftiness) and friction (roughness) are believed to be what comprise the aesthetic of soft.<br>
But even Kawabata can't understand what produces the anti-aesthetic of heebie-jeebies. ...heebie-jeebies seem related to fabric's “shear”—the capacity of a material to impose stress when it runs <i>along</i> skin, thus scraping or chafing it, rather than when it comes <i>at</i> skin, which leads to pokes or punctures."<br>
<a href="https://virginiaheffernan.substack.com/p/the-mystery-of-heebie-jeebies" target="_blank">The Mystery of Heebie-Jeebies: The human senses never cease detecting things the brain finds a way to dread</a>, Virginia Heffernan, Mar 16, 2024</p></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuEa3p46jX6z0DxM9R4Ld-_S3tKMZIwuhP7oG3XfqomlWO3UY8bt9pB3j7E0Gm833RSyWwv9lqt0vOCuYzqVQktZQw5zP66Q9pejv00HM2-TqLzrB-RQ3wy6xPwbWTVXIyifWETBl0a-pZkrJZHDjYN84HyZb7bj78M9wNnbHYJspWxedZSE2LGY5nCpc/s1600/achebe.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="books stacked in a spiral" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuEa3p46jX6z0DxM9R4Ld-_S3tKMZIwuhP7oG3XfqomlWO3UY8bt9pB3j7E0Gm833RSyWwv9lqt0vOCuYzqVQktZQw5zP66Q9pejv00HM2-TqLzrB-RQ3wy6xPwbWTVXIyifWETBl0a-pZkrJZHDjYN84HyZb7bj78M9wNnbHYJspWxedZSE2LGY5nCpc/s1600/achebe.jpg"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-52792839316336122162024-03-12T10:37:00.004-04:002024-03-12T10:38:08.840-04:00History: Denim jeans for workers, not 'men' or 'women'<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEGBA_w4ua7VbzBZkSAhajHJ9-NmEF0gqqCxdigPhJQTac-od-vnNfqkfK45OcVr_zcDzD2ALgEBDpfcLei2pOCV45t8-4V4LziBCbgF3WeIgEeSTHKJuTir5jZ2sDzDz1XGX03M3YTs4535y6u32M0xzF533d2gBnkpUi0Pq3r547NoFlQ6RZ8-RMLa0/s1600/jeans.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="waist and hips in jeans - seems female" border="0" width="80%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEGBA_w4ua7VbzBZkSAhajHJ9-NmEF0gqqCxdigPhJQTac-od-vnNfqkfK45OcVr_zcDzD2ALgEBDpfcLei2pOCV45t8-4V4LziBCbgF3WeIgEeSTHKJuTir5jZ2sDzDz1XGX03M3YTs4535y6u32M0xzF533d2gBnkpUi0Pq3r547NoFlQ6RZ8-RMLa0/s1600/jeans.jpg"/></a></div>
<center>Jeans by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/mabelamber-1377835/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3382010">Mabel Amber, who will one day</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=3382010">Pixabay</a></center>
<p>Denim jeans are for workers:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Women had begun wearing pants — specifically, denim jeans — <i>because they were granted practical permission in industrial factory work during World War II</i>. Women had not earned 'the right to wear pants' as a symbolic legal right, or as a matter of formal equality. The police had simply chosen, for obvious reasons, not to arrest them for wearing pants to and from work. Their pants were tied to their work, to the class status of being a worker in the formal labor market and the public sphere."<br>
<p> — "<a href="https://sadbrowngirl.substack.com/p/the-left-hand-of-the-law" target="_blank">The Left Hand of the Law</a>": Anti-Drag Law's Policing Ought to Inform Political Responses, Jules Gill-Peterson, Sad Brown Girl (Substack), Feb 27, 2023</p></blockquote>
<p>Later, jeans are not explicitly men's clothing, but not necessarily women's clothing either:</p>
<blockquote>“Those who do not want to change their anatomy but do want to change their gender behavior fare less well in establishing their social identity. The women Holly Devor called ‘gender blenders’ wore their hair short, dressed in unisex pants, shirts, and comfortable shoes, and did not wear jewelry or makeup. They described their everyday dress as women’s clothing: One said, ‘I wore jeans all the time, but I didn’t wear men’s clothes’ (Devor 1989, 100). Their gender identity as women, but because they refused to ‘do femininity,’ they were constantly taken for men (1987, 1989, 107-42). Devor said of them: ‘The most common area of complaint was with public washrooms. They repeatedly spoke of the humiliation of being challenged or ejected from women’s washrooms. Similarly, they found public change rooms to be dangerous territory and the buying of undergarments to be a difficult feat to accomplish’ (1987, 29). In an ultimate ironic twist, some f these women said ‘they would feel like transvestites if they were to wear dresses, and two women said that they had been called transvestites when they had done so’ (1987, 31). They resolved the ambiguity of their gender status by identifying as women in private and passing as men in public to avoid harassment on the street, to get men’s jobs, and, if they were lesbians, to make it easier to display affection publicly with their lovers (Devor 1989, 107–42). Sometimes they even used men’s bathrooms. When they had gender-neutral names, like Leslie, they could avoid the bureaucratic hassles that arose when they had to present their passports or other proof of identity, but because most had names associated with women, their appearance and their cards of identity were not conventionally congruent, and their gender status was in constant jeopardy. When they could, they found it easier to pass as men than to try to change the stereotyped notions of what women should look like.”<br>
Judith Lorber. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780300064971" target="_blank">Paradoxes of Gender</a></i>. Yale University, 1994. Chapter: “<a href="https://web.engr.oregonstate.edu/~tadepall/dpd/Lorber_The%20Social%20Construction%20of%20Gender.pdf" target="_blank">‘Night to His Day’: The Social Construction of Gender</a>” (PDF). p. 21.</blockquote>
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Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-3627047086450098482024-02-27T11:50:00.006-05:002024-02-28T12:34:55.837-05:00On Jewish values: 'Alfred Kazin's Journals'<p>Today's email from the New York Review of Books shares an old article, "The Hidden Life of Alfred Kazin," by Edward Mendelson (Aug 18, 2011). The email teases it:</p>
<blockquote>“‘Values are our only home in the universe,’ Kazin wrote in 1962 at the height of his public success, and the more intensely he thought about values, the more intensely he thought about himself as a Jew. ‘For what is it I draw my basic values from if not from the Jews!’ His journals explore a radical, idiosyncratic Judaism informed by the same nonconformist moral passion that drove William Blake’s radical, idiosyncratic Christianity.”</blockquote>
<h2>The Book</h2>
<p><a href="https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300187953/alfred-kazins-journals/" target="_blank">Alfred Kazin's Journals</a>: Edited by Richard M. Cook. Yale University Press, 2011.</p>
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<p>Publisher's description:</p>
<blockquote><p>At the time of his death in 1998, Alfred Kazin was considered one of the most influential intellectuals of postwar America. What is less well known is that Kazin had been contributing almost daily to an extensive private journal, which arguably contains some of his best writing. These journals collectively tell the story of his journey from Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood to his position as a dominant figure in twentieth-century cultural life.</p>
<p>To Kazin, the daily entry was a psychological and spiritual act. To read through these entries is to reexperience history as a series of daily discoveries by an alert, adventurous, if often mercurial intelligence. It is also to encounter an array of interesting and notable personalities. Sketches of friends, mistresses, family figures, and other intellectuals are woven in with commentary on Kazin's childhood, early religious interests, problems with parents, bouts of loneliness, dealings with publishers, and thoughts on the Holocaust. The journals also highlight his engagement with the political and cultural debates of the decades through which he lived. He wrestles with communism, cultural nationalism, liberalism, existentialism, Israel, modernism, and much more.</p>
<p>Judiciously selected and edited by acclaimed Kazin biographer Richard Cook, this collection provides the public with access to these previously unavailable writings and, in doing so, offers a fascinating social, historical, literary, and cultural record.</p></blockquote>
<p>Spotted Kazin here too:</p>
<p>"White nationalists have long identified with Israel: an ethnonational state that violates international legal, diplomatic and ethical protocols with its language of ethnic homogeneity, unwavering policy of territorial expansion, extrajudicial killings and demolitions. Today, an extreme manifestation of what Alfred Kazin, writing in his private journal in 1988, called ‘militant, daredevil, fuck-you-all Israel’ also serves as a palliative to many existential anxieties within the Anglo-American ruling classes."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n01/pankaj-mishra/memory-failure" target="_blank">Memory Failure</a>
Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No. 1 · 4 January 2024</p>
<h2>Another reflection on Jewish values</h2>
<p>Isaac Deutscher identified with the oppressed. Supporting people who are oppressed is what he saw as the important meaning of being Jewish.</p>
<p>"Polish Jewish intellectual Isaac Deutscher (1907–1967) insisted," as Rebecca Ruth Gould explains, "that his identity obliged him to adhere to a certain kind of partiality. In Deutscher’s own words: “I am … a Jew by force of my unconditional solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated.” Deutscher’s partiality was against racism, and ultimately against Zionism."</p>
<p>As I see it, "solidarity with the persecuted and exterminated" doesn't mean agreeing with anything and everything that person says about any topic whatsoever; it means having solidarity vis-a-vis their oppression and their right to exist and to get free from their oppression. The meaning of solidarity that is "unconditional" is, I think, that we don't impose additional conditions on our solidarity. They do not have to sing and dance for us to earn our solidarity for getting free. They do not have to bribe us. They do not have to work for us. The fact that they are oppressed is in itself a reason — the only reason — for us to have solidarity with them in their fight against oppression.</p>
<p>This is aligned with "what [Indian philosopher Akeel] Bilgrami calls ‘wilful imbalance’," meaning that you intentionally take sides. Your view is not from nowhere. You have a standpoint, and you choose the side you want to take.</p>
<p>Gould concludes her essay: "Justifications of free speech that rely on the liberal emphasis on balance obscure what it really means to silence another person’s voice. To silence is to deny, through the language of moderation and balance, their very right to exist. To respect free speech is to respect life itself."</p>
<p>As I understand it: If there's a debate over <i>maybe these people should be allowed to exist and be free, or maybe they shouldn't?</i> that debate doesn't embody freedom for the people who's lives are at stake, because one of the options being considered is that they shouldn't be free (or that they shouldn't exist at all, which is tightly linked to the idea that they shouldn't be free — those are overlapping concepts). This raises the question of, when we say "free speech," for whom is the speech free? For the person who's running their mouth, perhaps freedom means their right to speak any words it occurs to them to say or that pass through their lips with varying degrees of intentionality. But whether the speech <i>promotes freedom</i> is another question entirely, and it matters for the person who's being talked about. Free speech that undermines the conditions of freedom is a kind of paradox. Should the person being talked about cease to be free, or even cease to exist, in what sense will the speaker continue to have "freedom of speech" to talk about them?</p>
<p>"<a href="https://medium.com/discourse/against-balance-f1c5cf1b93ec?sk=v2%2F7a788934-a643-4500-a2f0-1586bfab8452" target="_blank">Against Balance: Why Free Speech Cannot and Should not be Neutral</a>," Rebecca Ruth Gould, Dialogue & Discourse (Medium), Feb 25, 2024</p>
<p>Citing <i><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/380-the-non-jewish-jew" target="_blank">The Non-Jewish Jew: And Other Essays</a></i>by Isaac Deutscher (Verso, 2017).</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtmEnDo29ejL40Pe0EVgHcqf7_OvNJcCZijoc2c4HR7z6ysRlcV1JBqzu0rdBuotgq9fJtH58libCTicES4ZFkttRhCuaMgvyhcO6HfbZ-F7rrm6-MHybbpX2GF1vpN-qhJ_2Io-1nP1nz73mic5XzLk7CT34O8dGwNUCRFBXrZk2CUtdO4tzfPHgSRzU/s1600/deutscher.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="book cover for The Non-Jewish Jew" border="0" width="40%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtmEnDo29ejL40Pe0EVgHcqf7_OvNJcCZijoc2c4HR7z6ysRlcV1JBqzu0rdBuotgq9fJtH58libCTicES4ZFkttRhCuaMgvyhcO6HfbZ-F7rrm6-MHybbpX2GF1vpN-qhJ_2Io-1nP1nz73mic5XzLk7CT34O8dGwNUCRFBXrZk2CUtdO4tzfPHgSRzU/s1600/deutscher.jpg"/></a></div>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-35411734079398907762024-02-18T09:16:00.005-05:002024-02-25T12:55:43.257-05:00On the portal: Midlife transition<p>A reference to "the portal" drew my attention. Yes, the midlife transition is like a portal. I read:</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18Nhog7AODnUSOIR8EnRfx-KNwmDMemSCy8wRAsnaWz6YuPwBPZ6HTVgeAV6YyXSYeX5C0osEEZPBWmpR23l-5W_S3CrH4fA5dzdFZCCZ1qhpLZ7mMaTVrj6fWLWL6ZdFDDbpIaMPa30QLLOzuIZ2WAicL2zQtSQP-k1O1mJpc2Xn2tacT1N4SgbU0BQ/s1600/stained-glass-ceiling.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="glowing circle" border="0" width="75%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi18Nhog7AODnUSOIR8EnRfx-KNwmDMemSCy8wRAsnaWz6YuPwBPZ6HTVgeAV6YyXSYeX5C0osEEZPBWmpR23l-5W_S3CrH4fA5dzdFZCCZ1qhpLZ7mMaTVrj6fWLWL6ZdFDDbpIaMPa30QLLOzuIZ2WAicL2zQtSQP-k1O1mJpc2Xn2tacT1N4SgbU0BQ/s1600/stained-glass-ceiling.jpg"/></a></div>
<p><b>"<a href="https://annehelen.substack.com/p/are-you-in-the-portal" target="_blank">Are You In the Portal?</a>" It's a crisis, but it's an awakening. Anne Helen Petersen. Culture Study (Substack). Oct 22, 2023.</b></p>
<p>Petersen's mother said to her one day:</p>
<blockquote><p>"'What are you now, 42?...I think that’s exactly when I started writing textbooks. I just had this huge creative surge.'</p>
<p>What an amazing way to reframe the energy I’ve been channeling this last year: energy to write another book, energy to figure out a Culture Study-related podcast, energy to dahlia farm. What if it wasn’t ambition pushing me forward….but a swell of creativity? And what if that swell of creativity was possible because I’ve become a whole lot less concerned with bullshit?"</p></blockquote>
<p>Petersen read how <a href="https://www.instagram.com/anjattyson/?hl=en" target="_blank">Anja Tyson</a> referred to "the weird spiritual / emotional / professional / transitional portal that women ages 37 to 45 are in." Then, Petersen says: "I became obsessed with this idea of a portal, and when I brought it up — on IG, but also in casual conversation — it seemed to resonate. Something was happening. Maiden-becomes-crone, sure. Destabilizing, yes. But it was also an experience of transformation, of refinement."
<p>She spoke to Satya Byock, "a Jungian psychotherapist who specializes in younger patients going through transitions" and author of the book <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780525511687" target="_blank">Quarterlife</a></i>, who sees that, "within a Jungian framework, there’s a midlife passage," and "the experience is more intense if you’ve been heads-down — absorbed by parenting, by your career, by an illness, by <i>something</i> — for some time."</p>
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<p>She also spoke to Claire Zulkey, author of the <a href="https://evilwitches.substack.com/" target="_blank">Evil Witches</a> newsletter. "'Part of me thinks that I’ve gone through the portal,' she told me, 'but the part of me that’s paranoid and wise thinks: oh bitch you haven’t even begun to portal.'" If you're privileged to do so, you can redesign your life so you have more time for parenting, yet still, "it’s half boredom, half gratitude."</p>
<p>(I have felt that way about redesigning my life for an office career.)</p>
<p>Career coach <a href="https://kereneldad.com/" target="_blank">Keren Eldad</a> had her own experience at 36. It's just that something "sets you off the edge," as Eldad puts it. "It can be stagnation around your career, it can be kids going to elementary school or even college. It can be around physical changes..." Once you're set off, you're in an ongoing process of letting go of the past. What you feel about yourself and your life might be separate from what you feel about the new work you're doing. Eldad says: "Like, I am personally done, but <i>this</i> is not done. And that, you feel invigorated by. If you’re grieving what you’ve left behind, let yourself feel it. What you’re doing is gathering your strength, and there will be a point when the grieving ends."</p>
<p>Petersen concludes:</p>
<blockquote><p>"There’s nothing magical about the portal. It can be painful and discombobulating and, as Claire Zulkey points out, sweaty. There’s certainly no guaranteed joy on the other end. I don’t think there’s a right or a wrong way to experience it or to understand its shape in your life. I don’t even think it’s gendered...It’s just a period of transition. You can lean into it, you can ignore it, you can understand it as a crisis or a transformation."</p></blockquote>
<p>You should read her essay "<a href="https://annehelen.substack.com/p/are-you-in-the-portal" target="_blank">Are You In the Portal?</a>" for more of this.</p>
<h2>Questions to guide a planned transition</h2>
<p>Osi I. wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Here are a few points I reflected upon as I prepared to take my leaps. They might be helpful as you consider yours:</p>
<ol>
<li>How important is it to take such a step? Will it change my life for the better?</li>
<li>What are the barriers, if any, to taking the leap? How can they be addressed, mitigated, overcome?</li>
<li>Can I just step out on faith to do what I know my spirit is calling me to do?</li>
<li>Will taking this leap add value/joy/peace/fulfillment to my life?</li>
<li>Will this leap help me and mine grow in unimaginable ways?</li>
<li>Will this leap save my life?</li>
<li>If I don’t take this leap, what will it cost me?"</li>
</ol>
<p> — "<a href="https://medium.com/fourth-wave/i-left-my-6-figure-job-to-save-my-life-47a3ae7ab6e7?sk=v2%2F107e4460-4d40-4f17-89e3-029f1827de05" target="_blank">I Left My 6 figure Job to Save My Life</a>," Feb 25, 2024</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>I wrote of my midlife transition</h2>
<p><i><a href="https://tuckerlieberman.com/bad-fire/" target="_blank">Bad Fire</a>: A Memoir of Disruption</i>.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-63405570688751556532024-02-14T14:33:00.006-05:002024-02-18T15:40:57.951-05:00Three waves of opposition to transgender bodies<p>G. Samantha Rosenthal is a <a href="https://gsrosenthal.com/" target="_blank">scholar of transgender history</a>.</p>
<p>Here's a recent article:</p>
<p><a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pseudoscience-has-long-been-used-to-oppress-transgender-people/" target="_blank">Pseudoscience Has Long Been Used to Oppress Transgender People</a>: Three major waves of opposition to transgender health care in the past century have cited faulty science to justify hostility. G. Samantha Rosenthal & The Conversation US. Scientific American. February 12, 2024.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZExkAwWR123jq6mShoU7LgtopL6G5VGZN2e3iygVS4ha_YaQ6FqGlkxhhD63ItlmAt9cpdZ1hkkZLpyDNKVRfIzOTv8jdENHTRujXzeBm5cR3hGHiB09EQi08uAgT4Hpl7x3Ypx7DLwDjZt5rLFTIhlgijo8jwYYNTLD-NGjd6QKNS3DUtUTSwY9CYU4/s1600/image.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="statue of two people grappling" border="0" width="50%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZExkAwWR123jq6mShoU7LgtopL6G5VGZN2e3iygVS4ha_YaQ6FqGlkxhhD63ItlmAt9cpdZ1hkkZLpyDNKVRfIzOTv8jdENHTRujXzeBm5cR3hGHiB09EQi08uAgT4Hpl7x3Ypx7DLwDjZt5rLFTIhlgijo8jwYYNTLD-NGjd6QKNS3DUtUTSwY9CYU4/s1600/image.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>Rosenthal argues that there have been "three waves of opposition to transgender health care". I organized this blog post based on them.<p>
<h2>Wave 1: Nazi Germany</h2>
<p>Rosenthal writes: "In 1933, when the Nazis rose to power, they <a href="https://daily.jstor.org/90-years-on-the-destruction-of-the-institute-of-sexual-science/" target="_blank">cracked down on</a> transgender <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/" target="_blank">medical research and clinical practice</a> in Europe."</h2>
<p>One important beginning in modern trans history: "In 1919, the German sexologist <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-early-20th-century-german-trans-rights-activist-who-transformed-the-worlds-view-of-gender-and-sexuality-106278" target="_blank">Magnus Hirschfeld</a> founded the <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-forgotten-history-of-the-worlds-first-trans-clinic/" target="_blank">Institut für Sexualwissenschaft</a> in Berlin, which became the world’s leading center for queer and transgender research and clinical practice" just as "the new science of hormones was just reaching maturation and <a href="https://uncpress.org/book/9781469674858/wondrous-transformations/" target="_blank">entering mainstream consciousness</a>." Following an "Enlightenment-era effort to <a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/17496977.2020.1794161" target="_blank">classify and categorize</a> the world’s life forms," some scientists "<a href="https://theconversation.com/proposed-1920s-orphanage-study-just-one-example-in-history-of-scientific-racism-37015" target="_blank">developed a hierarchy of human types</a> based on race, gender and sexuality. They were inspired by <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/social-Darwinism" target="_blank">social Darwinism</a>, a set of pseudoscientific beliefs applying the theory of survival of the fittest to human differences." Everyone was classifying queer/trans people, but some wanted to do so for political liberation and others for genocide.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/gender-affirming-care-has-a-long-history-in-the-us-and-not-just-for-transgender-people-201752" target="_blank">Gender-affirming care has existed</a> in the United States since the 1940s. Rosenthal says: "<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-are-puberty-blockers-and-how-do-they-work/" target="_blank">Puberty blockers</a>, hormone therapies and anatomical surgeries are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-28/opinion-gender-affirming-care-is-not-new-or-experimental" target="_blank">neither experimental nor untested</a> and have been <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-the-science-on-gender-affirming-care-for-transgender-kids-really-shows/" target="_blank">safely administered</a> to cisgender, transgender and intersex adults and children for decades," and opposition to this "has historically been rooted in pseudoscience."</p>
<h3>Learn more</h3>
<p>This history is known. Historians can ask questions:</p>
<blockquote>“So who are the Bad Gays of Weimar Berlin? Were they the ambisexual performance freaks whose audacious and aggressive sexuality and playful confusion of gender norms triggered an entire society into fascism, as though the Nazis were an allergic reaction? Or were they people like Ernst Röhm, whose worship of masculine vitality… and who followed that impulse towards lifting fascists to power? Were they people like Friedrich Radszuweit, cautious and apolitical men who decided to stand back and stand by while fascism gained steam? Were they people like Hirschfeld, complicated and ambivalent men with deep reservoirs of idealism, knowledge, and compassion who were limited by their blind spots, shaped by and shaping racist and eugenic discourses, and often willing to accept rights for some at the expense of others?”
<p> — Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781839763274" target="_blank">Bad Gays: A Homosexual History</a></i>. London: Verso, 2022.</p></blockquote>
<p>In late 2022, for the first time, "a court acknowledged the possibility that trans people were persecuted in Nazi Germany." — <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/new-research-reveals-how-the-nazis-targeted-transgender-people-180982931/" target="_blank">New Research Reveals How the Nazis Targeted Transgender People</a>, Laurie Marhoefer, The Conversation, September 21, 2023.</p>
<p>This result followed 20 years of activism. In January 2023, the German parliament "dedicated the [annual Holocaust] remembrance to those killed by Nazis because of their gender identity and sexual orientation. The body also acknowledged decades of post-World War II persecution against LGBTQ+ people in Germany." — <a href="https://www.advocate.com/news/holocaust-lgbtq-victims-german-parliament#rebelltitem1" target="_blank">The Advocate</a>
<p>For more information about the colonial-era and industrial-era construction of "homosexuality," please read "<a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/gay-nazi-villains-32893c25d923" target="_blank">There Were Gay Nazis</a>". It's a 7-minute read on Medium.</p>
<p><a href="https://read.dukeupress.edu/glq/article-abstract/28/4/489/318097/Gay-Neo-Nazis-in-the-United-StatesVictimhood" target="_blank">Gay Neo-Nazis in the United States: Victimhood, Masculinity, and the Public/Private Spheres</a><br>
Blu Buchanan<br>
GLQ (2022) 28 (4): 489–513.<br>
October 1, 2022<br>
https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-9991299<br>
The author said on Twitter: "This was YEARS in the making, and I hope it’s a valuable launching point for future scholar-organizers."<br>
It's rentable from Duke University Press for $15 for 48 hours.</p>
<h2>Wave 2: 1970s</h2>
<p>Rosenthal writes: "In 1979, a research report critical of transgender medicine <a href="https://doi.org/10.7326/M22-1480" target="_blank">led to the closure</a> of the most well-respected clinics in the United States."</p>
<blockquote><p>"In the 1950s and 1960s, transgender medicine bounced back in the U.S. Scientists and clinicians at several universities began experimenting with new <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/H/bo156724705.html" target="_blank">hormonal and surgical interventions</a>. In 1966, Johns Hopkins became the <a href="https://soundcloud.com/hopkins-medical-archives/gender-identity-clinic-press-conference-1966" target="_blank">first university hospital in the world</a> to offer trans health care.</p>
<p>By the 1970s, trans medicine went mainstream. <a href="https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674013797" target="_blank">Nearly two dozen university hospitals</a> were operating gender identity clinics and treating thousands of transgender Americans. Several trans women and men wrote <a href="https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/01/29/the-conundrum-of-conundrum/" target="_blank">popular autobiographical accounts</a> of their transitions. Trans people were even <a href="https://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip_507-cc0tq5s22t" target="_blank">on television</a>, talking about their bodies and fighting for their rights."</p></blockquote>
<p>Rosenthal continues: A 1979 study by Meyer and Reter was "homophobic and classist in design" insofar as it defined the success of gender transitions by whether the people had "straight marriages and...gender-appropriate jobs." So: "The study exemplified the <a href="https://nyupress.org/9781479899371/trans-medicine/" target="_blank">pseudoscientific beliefs</a> at the heart of transgender medicine in the 1960s through the 1980s, that patients had to conform to societal norms – including heterosexuality, gender conformity, domesticity and marriage – in order to receive care. This was not an ideology rooted in science but in bigotry."</p>
<h2>Wave 3: Post-Covid</h2>
<p>Rosenthal writes: "And since 2021, when <a href="https://www.npr.org/2023/06/20/1183344228/arkansas-2021-gender-affirming-care-ban-transgender-blocked" target="_blank">Arkansas became the first U.S. state</a> among now <a href="https://www.lgbtmap.org/equality-maps/healthcare_youth_medical_care_bans" target="_blank">at least 21 other states</a> banning <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/gender-affirming-health-care-should-be-a-right-not-a-crime/" target="_blank">gender-affirming care</a> for minors, we have been living in a third wave."</p>
<p>See my article: <a href="https://disruptivedissertation.blogspot.com/2024/02/anti-trans-laws-united-states-2024.html" target="_blank">2024 anti-transgender initiatives in the US</a></p>
<p>Similarly, Chase Strangio: "Though contemporary political assaults on trans lives began in 2016, it was only in 2019 that the right found a fruitful opening for attack: Since 2020, 24 states have passed bills barring trans kids from participating in sports aligned with their gender identities." ("<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/15/opinion/trans-visibility-legislative-rights.html" target="_blank">Trans Visibility Is Nice. Safety Is Even Better</a>," <i>New York Times</i>, Feb. 15, 2024)</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-37057283184812600632024-02-13T11:01:00.002-05:002024-02-15T09:06:36.345-05:00On systems thinking<p><i>Systems thinking</i> is non-hierarchical and undermines supremacist thinking.</p>
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<h2>On 'systems thinking'</h2>
<p>A few days ago on Bluesky, Dr. Elizabeth Sawin says it's "revolutionary/radical thinking" (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/bethsawin.bsky.social/post/3kkyxibsumm2m" target="_blank">Bluesky</a>)</p>
<p>there aren't lines in the world, just in our minds"<br>
good: "curiosity about borders and boundaries"<br>
dangerous: "treating made-up boundaries as real" (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/bethsawin.bsky.social/post/3kkyxm5tjp32v" target="_blank">Bluesky</a>)</p>
<p>"events unfold in multistep (sometimes circular, sometimes branching) chains of causation" (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/bethsawin.bsky.social/post/3kkyxutmspn2b" target="_blank">Bluesky</a>)
<p>She recommends this book: <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781603580557" target="_blank">Thinking In Systems</a></i> by <a href="https://donellameadows.org/" target="_blank">Donella Meadows</a></p>
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<h2>Right vs. wrong</h2>
<p>People like to perceive a Team A vs. Team B conflict and propose which side they'd be on or (as a spectator) hope will win. However, such an imagined "conflict" may not the best way of understanding what's going on. Maybe there's a place for A and B to both exist in the world and to exist in some kind of creative tension or mutual support. Jumping to <i>right vs. wrong</i> eliminates possibilities.</p>
<p>Tessa Koumoundouros shares an example of a failure of systems thinking: Instead of acknowledging "complex ecosystem interactions," we reduce it to a problem of "horses vs wildlife that can be fenced (it can't) to argue for an emotionaly charged 'ethical decision', at expense of the entire system" (<a href="https://bsky.app/profile/tesskou.bsky.social/post/3kl2dw256yc2q" target="_blank">Bluesky</a>) The context is this article: "<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/religion/rethinking-biodiversity-against-killing-feral-horses-kosciuszko/103443638" target="_blank">Rethinking the mantra of biodiversity</a>: Why the past should not determine the future." Pablo Castelló and Francisco Santiago-Ávila. ABC Australia. Feb 8, 2024.</p>
<h2>Ecological crisis</h2>
<p>The tendency toward atomistic thinking, where you can focus on a discrete person or thing as well as on some direct cause-and-effect chain centering on that same originally perceived person or thing (whose identity is not transformed by the process), and individualistic thinking (selfishness), is a reason why people don't productively discuss or sustainably enact our relationships to natural systems.</p>
<h2>Gender</h2>
<p>"Gender" means "category." To understand someone's gender, we can look at them not only as individuals, and not only as how they individually fit (or don't fit) into the category, but at their <i>relationships with others</i> and how <i>everyone's</i> characteristics and category membership are <i>always in flux</i>. That would be systems thinking.</p>
<h2>Another suggestion</h2>
<p>See also: <a href="https://systemdynamics.org/product/systems-1-an-introduction-to-systems-thinking/" target="_blank"><i>Systems 1: An Introduction to Systems Thinking</i></a> by Draper Kauffman and Morgan Kauffman</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-76569092907068346122024-01-10T20:03:00.012-05:002024-03-09T15:47:59.996-05:00Writing complex topics that feel accessible
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<p>On the "single stark element" that's with you all along in your narrative, something that "underpins the whole thing," <b>Charlie Jane Anders</b> says today:</p>
<blockquote><p>"I have a feeling my stuff errs on the side of 'deceptively complicated.' I write things that have a million things whizzing around, but they boil down to one or two simple ideas. Or at least, I hope that there’s one or two main ideas when you look past all the fancy whizzbangery on the surface, or else you are left with just a mickle of a muddle. Right?</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>But if something is deceptively complex, how do you keep it from becoming just straight-up overcomplicated and messy? I wish there was a magic bullet – but I think part of it is that if you want to be able to strip away all the layers of complexity and find something stark underneath it all – a single stark element – then that needs to be there the whole time. You have to have one idea that you keep coming back that underpins the whole thing."<br>
— Charlie Jane Anders, "<a href="https://buttondown.email/charliejane/archive/the-difference-between-deceptively-simple-and/" target="_blank">The Difference Between Deceptively Simple and Deceptively Complex</a>," Buttondown, January 10, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p>Her book on writing:</p>
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<h2>But what makes it serious?</h2>
<p>Be your theme simple, complex, or somewhere in the middle like "deceptively complex," what makes it <i>serious</i>?</p>
<p>Sometimes you have to write it to find out and let the reader decide.</p>
<p>An affirmation: My essay theme "may seem silly" and "probably is silly, which is a shame, considering that I’ve got this whole essay about it now." ("<a href="https://jude-doyle.ghost.io/lana-del-rey-red-scare/" target="_blank">This is What Makes Us Girls: On the Lana-Del-Rey-to-Red-Scare Pipeline</a>." Jude Doyle (on Ghost). 11 Jan 2024.)</p>
<h2>Ask lots of questions</h2>
<p>Ask questions, e.g.,:</p>
<ul>
<li>"What words would you use to describe the most important values held by people in your culture?"</li>
<li>"Who taught you those values? Why are they important to you?"</li>
</ul>
<p>And so on.</p>
<p>Those two questions, and a few more, are from "<a href="https://mediate.com/50-possible-questions-to-open-israeli-palestinian-dialogues/" target="_blank">50 Possible Questions to Open Israeli-Palestinian Dialogues</a>," Kenneth Cloke, Mediate.com, January 26, 2024</p>
<h2>Ask one big question</h2>
<p>"The personal essay can be about almost anything," Aimee Liu writes, but is "rooted in a central question." The writer writes themself into the frame as the person who is raising the question, a recognition that is central to what makes it a personal essay. It doesn't matter so much if the question is answered. The personal essay "doesn’t necessarily seek to make sense out of life experiences; rather, these essays tend to let go of that sense-making impulse to do something else, like nose around a bit in the wondering, uncertain space that lies between experience and the need to explain or organize it in a logical manner."</p>
<p>This is from "<a href="https://aimeeliu.substack.com/p/picture-your-structure" target="_blank">Picture Your Structure</a>" in her Legacy & Lore (Substack, February 16, 2024):</p>
<blockquote><p>"Like a memorist, an essayist always writes two essays simultaneously, overlapped as transparencies, one exploring what Vivian Gornick calls the situation, the other what she terms the story. Poet Richard Hugo talks about a piece’s 'triggering subject' and its generated, or real, subject. Phillip Lopate describes the 'double perspective' that an essayist needs, the ability to both dramatize and to reflect. I’ve always talked to my writing students about the <i>narrow subject</i> and the <i>larger subject</i>."</p></blockquote>
<h2>There's no one model to explain all of human psychology</h2>
<p>Paul Tournier explained in <i>The Violence Within</i> that there are “schools of scientific psychology” that “set up a doctrinaire model into which they attempt to fit the whole of human behaviour in terms of a few relatively simple mechanisms — projection and introjection, identification and differentiation, unconscious repression and liberation of complexes, drives and resistances…” While these may contain insights that are “true and valuable,” Tournier says that when we give too much weight to them (exactly “in the very fact of their being elevated into systems”) we risk “the infinite diversity of life and of the mind,” and we may forget that “the essential problems are not about mechanisms, but about values, not about functions but about the person, problems which cannot ever be reduced to an inventory of functions. Literary psychology cannot be learnt—it is too rich, too varied, too subtle, because it never allows itself to be reduced to any sort of model. It may be looked at as one might contemplate a big bunch of wild flowers…the bouquet as a whole does not deliver up the secret of its harmonious unity.”<br>
Paul Tournier. <a href="https://archive.org/details/violencewithin00tour/page/65/mode/1up" target="_blank"><i>The Violence Within</i></a>. Translated by Edwin Hudson, 1978. New York: Harper & Row, 1982, (originally <i>Violence et Puissance</i>, 1977) pp. 64–65.</p>
<h2>People have feelings about what they do</h2>
<blockquote><p>"I can’t think of a way for a character — fictional or otherwise — to pull off a convincing redemption story without experiencing and expressing true remorse ... feeling remorse is a valuable and cathartic experience that empowers change. Whether personal responsibility is an illusion or not, <i>feeling</i> responsible and taking action to change our behavior, is a powerful thing."<br>
— Steven Toews, <a href="https://writingcooperative.com/how-to-write-a-convincing-redemption-story-40ebebbb1e5e?sk=v2%2F001fd914-41b5-4df8-bb23-46c5f6ccda2c" target="_blank">How to Write a Convincing Redemption Story</a>, The Writing Cooperative, Feb 8, 2024</p></blockquote>
<h2>Pick a compelling title</h2>
<p>Michael Gallant gives some tips in <a href="https://blog.bookbaby.com/how-to-write/writing-inspiration/how-to-write-a-book-title" target="_blank">How to Write a Book Title That Gets Attention</a>, BookBaby, January 11, 2024:</p>
<ul>
<li>"Be clear and concise."</li>
<li>"Use strong, evocative language."</li>
<li>"Be original and unique."</li>
<li>"Make sure your title is relevant to your book’s content."</li>
</ul>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-23518677958077891292024-01-07T09:49:00.007-05:002024-02-05T07:10:43.749-05:00Brian Evenson: 'Denarration....you're told something and then it's removed'<p><a href="https://bombmagazine.org/articles/brian-evenson-rob-goyanes/" target="_blank">The Horror Is What We Don’t Yet Know (and Maybe Never Will): Brian Evenson Interviewed by Rob Goyanes</a>, BOMB Magazine, Jun 25, 2019</p>
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<p>One of his books is "<i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781566894166" target="_blank">Last Days</a></i>, about an amputee cult who captures an unwitting messiah."</p>
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<p>From the interview:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>RG<br>
You use repetition, in terms of wording and syntax, to create an unsettling effect. What other devices do you consciously employ to produce this?</p>
<p>BE<br>
Most of my work in revision is about sound and rhythm, trying to figure out what is going to really serve the story. I'm working with those things to try to manipulate the reader. A lot of my work uses a process of “denarration”, by which I mean it presents something, narrates it as if it’s real, then it takes it away. A lot of things are qualified or taken away or compromised, or you're told something and then it's removed. That is a big part of the unsettling effect, of destabilizing the story’s world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Evenson continues:</p>
<blockquote><p>"So much fiction has this idea: there's a character, they confront something, they change, and then they're different people. If you're around humans for long enough, you realize that that's the exception rather than the rule. It so rarely happens that people actually change in a meaningful way. I've always been a little skeptical of character development, but then what do you do with fiction? My sense is that maybe it’s about conveying mental states and changing the reader. That, to me, is more important than conveying some kind of change in a character in a world that doesn't look like our world."</p></blockquote>
<h2>This reminds me of what William Maxwell enjoyed in novels (1955)</h2>
<p>William Maxwell, in a 1955 speech at Smith College, said: "These forms of prestidigitation, these surprises, may not any of them be what makes a novel great, but unless it has some of them, I do not care whether a novel is great or not; I cannot read it." (see: <i>The Writer as Illusionist: Uncollected & Unpublished Work</i> by William Maxwell. Copyright © 1955 by William Maxwell. Introduction Copyright © 2024 by Alec Wilkinson. Excerpted with the permission of Godine. Reprinted in <a href="https://link.lithub.com/view/602ea7e7180f243d6533aa43kb0le.tou/15649dae" target="_blank">LitHub, January 24, 2024</a>.)</p>
<p>The reader stays to find out whether "there will be more neighbors turning up than the narrator expects, or else he will very much wish that they had." The characters don't know something because "they are at sea, pulling at the oars in an open boat; and so are you." You're introduced to a character, and "you have entered into a personal relationship with a stranger, who will perhaps make demands on you, extraordinary personal demands..." Or: "A door opens slowly in front of you, and you cannot see who is opening it but, like a sleepwalker, you have to go in." Or the narrator "has not actually set eyes on this interesting new person that everyone is talking about. She is therefore all the more interested. And meanwhile, surprisingly, the reader cannot forget the lady, or the dog, or the seafront." Or the writer gives special voice, attitude: "A way of looking at people that is ironical, shrewd, faintly derisive, and that suggests that every other kind of writing is a trick (this is a special trick, in itself ) and that this book is going to be about life as it really is, not some fabrication of the author’s." And "the writer invokes a time: He offers the reader a wheat field on a hot day in July, and a flying machine, and a little boy with his hand in his father’s. He has been brought to the wheat field to see a flying machine go up. They stand, waiting, in a crowd of people. It is a time when you couldn’t be sure, as you can now, that a flying machine would go up." Trust: "If he is a good novelist, you can lean against his trees; they will not give way. ...you ought to be able to shake them until an apple falls on your head. (The apple of understanding.)" As in "the shop of the live fish, toward the beginning of Malraux’s <i>Man’s Fate</i>. ... As the hour that the assassination will be attempted is mentioned, the water on the surface of the bowls begins to stir feebly. The carp, awakened by the sound of voices, begin to swim round and round, and my hair stands on end." Timing: "a fatality about the timing of these visits; he always comes just when she has washed her hair. She is presented to the reader with a bath towel around her wet head, her hair in pins, in her kimono, sitting on the couch in the living room, silent, while her parents make conversation with the suitor. All her hopes of appearing to advantage lie shattered on the carpet at her feet. She is inconsolable but dignified, a figure of supportable pathos."</p>
<h2>More reading (if you've got a Medium membership)</h2>
<p>Medium members: Check out "<a href="https://medium.com/engage/worst-philosophy-paper-i-ever-wrote-282e72daf2f8" target="_blank">The Worst Philosophy Paper I Ever Wrote</a>."</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-21501014664241450682023-12-30T17:24:00.011-05:002024-02-16T08:20:46.053-05:00The structure of time in stories<blockquote><p>"Whereas a film has 24 frames per second in which to tell its story, a traditional comic book only has a small number of frames, or panels, per page, usually between five and nine, across a total of 22 pages. Comparatively, a comic book is equivalent to about six seconds of film. But obviously, any comic contains more narrative than the time it takes to read this sentence. So where, then, does the content 'hide'?"<br>
— Roy Schwartz, <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781476662909" target="_blank">Is Superman Circumcised?: The Complete Jewish History of the World's Greatest Hero</a>, McFarland & Company, 2021.</p></blockquote>
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<blockquote><p>“I need a meta-time, a thing fueled by the kind of heartbeat I desire — one that is rule-breaking, empathetic, aware of its power enough to offer some kind of mercy.<br>
In DC Comics, there is a concept called hypertime, an in-universe framework formulated as a diagram, making the timelines of stories accurate, even without continuity across existing collections of storylines. The idea postulates a kind of multiversal transit map where each line, representing its own story, runs parallel, crosses over others, and carries on, with characters hopping from one train to another across universes. A reader in the third-dimensional space can look down and make meaning of the stories between the pages, leaving room for the possibility of a fourth-dimensional, hyper-cubic reader who examines that space, a geometric vision incorporating our universe along with the comic story world."<br>
— Kristin Keane. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9798985008906" target="_blank">An Encyclopedia of Bending Time</a></i>. Baltimore: Barrelhouse, 2022. p. 60.</p>
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<blockquote><p>"...pretty much all of my favorite books screw around with the order of events, or come shaped like puzzle boxes, or have seven separate 'third acts.' Like David Foster Wallace's <I>Infinite Jest</i> or Rebecca Roanhorse's <i>Black Sun</i>, which jump around in time, or Mary Doria Russell's <i>The Sparrow</i>, which intersperses two timelines that slowly converge.<br>
Time is the one drug that absolutely everyone is hooked on. And fiction is the only place to get a really potent hit."<br>
— Charlie Jane Anders. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781250800015" target="_blank">Never Say You Can’t Survive: How to Get Through Hard Times By Making Up Stories</a></i>. Tordotcom, 2021. Chapter 24.</p>
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<blockquote><p>"Time isn’t an orderly stream. Time isn’t a placid lake recording each of our ripples. Time is viscous. Time is a massive flow. It is a self-healing substance, which is to say, almost everything will be lost."<br>
Charles Yu. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780307739452" target="_blank">How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe</a></i>. Pantheon, 2010. p. 14.</p></blockquote>
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<blockquote><p>"This experiencing of time, it seems to me, is what sets writing apart and makes it more than simply words, more valuable than a commodity, more pleasurable than the audio-visual product which digital culture has converted into a space of hollowed time, like the time you spend flying between two airports. Writing is time packed full. It derives its morality from its immorality; it achieves compassion, not by flattery or glib misrepresentation, but with a gaze that is concerned only with seeing what is there, uncompromisingly, avoiding all fakery. This, then, is what it means to search for the truth: the objective that attends me whenever I ask myself, in an ironic spirit, Why do you write? or, What does writing mean to you?"<br>
— <a href="https://therakha.substack.com/p/i-write-like-a-lover-i-write-like" target="_blank">I write like a lover, I write like one dead</a>. The opening essay of my second Mutanabbi book, translated by Robin Moger. Youssef Rakha. Language of Loss (Substack). Dec. 31, 2022.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"Linear history, Oedipal history, is our fantasy, and to perpetuate it we invented the myth of an authoritarianism arising from the preterit, even though authority can only be exercised from the present. Borges, whose work was concerned with the manipulation of time, claimed that each author invents his precursors. Or, to put it in Phillip K. Dick’s terms, the Oedipal structure is a <I>Counter-ClockWorld</i>, a world where, as in this Dick novel, the libraries destroy books and the dead emerge from their graves.The best-kept secret of linear oxidental time is that it is written from the future to the past."<br>
Heriberto Yépez. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781930068636" target="_blank">The Empire of Neomemory</a></i>. Translated by Jen Hofer, Christian Nagler, & Brian Whitener. ChainLinks, 2013. Originally: El Imperio de la neomemoria (Oaxaca: Almadía, 2007). Part I: America, Pseudo-Patriarchy, Pantopia.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>“Any sequence of events is interesting because of its positive and negative shapes. Take a pair of scissors and cut something out. Anything. Why not a devil with horns and a tail and cloven hooves. So. There is your paper with a devil-shaped hole in it. Two devil-shapes, one positive, one negative, and both of them made at the very same moment. Was the Battle of Manzikert the shape of the paper or the shape of the hole? It’s as I’ve said before: there is always a twoness in the oneness, and for this reason it’s almost impossible to know what is happening in the space-time configuration. Not only that: as soon as an effort is made to look at any particular thing the aspect of that thing becomes other than what it was—that event that happened in full view when unlooked-at covers itself when observed, spins around itself one of those wonderful encrusted eggs with a peephole in one end of it; I the observer, receding reactively from the gaze that proceeds from my eyes, find myself shot into the distance thousands of miles away from the peephole. Inch by inch I think my way back; closer, closer, closer I come and here it is all tiny—the tiny, tiny Battle of Manzikert.”<br>
— Russell Hoban. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781941147825" target="_blank">Pilgermann</a>.</i> London: Bloomsbury, 1983.</p></blockquote>
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<blockquote><p>"If you have come to your planned ending and it doesn’t seem to be working, run your eye up the page and the page before that. You may see that your best ending is somewhere in there, that you were finished before you thought you were."<br>
— John McPhee, in an <a href="https://newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/14/structure" target="_blank">essay on structure</a> in the New Yorker (January 6, 2013), quoted by Aimee Liu in "<a href="https://aimeeliu.substack.com/p/picture-your-structure" target="_blank">Picture Your Structure</a>," Legacy & Lore (Substack), February 16, 2024.</p></blockquote>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-39060962942010642882023-12-22T18:01:00.006-05:002023-12-30T09:37:45.205-05:00A Jewish sense of story<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRF_KZxEAKD3yLXapbBTyoREXQ7egB7WUSsbgGqDaFYQDZpTbaAUHbpYnB48JvLdtPjXGtArBmkdpPasUqO7ag_hV6N3nmoTJiIPY79uOD056gx2VsaRO-xkEgYSyofzG_I474iNjRB_hsOYxTjElbXNlmgu_pUj1L-_8g5hYSwxAxN8CwKcImYv8CqMQ/s1600/stained-glass.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="spiral stained glass" border="0" width="80%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRF_KZxEAKD3yLXapbBTyoREXQ7egB7WUSsbgGqDaFYQDZpTbaAUHbpYnB48JvLdtPjXGtArBmkdpPasUqO7ag_hV6N3nmoTJiIPY79uOD056gx2VsaRO-xkEgYSyofzG_I474iNjRB_hsOYxTjElbXNlmgu_pUj1L-_8g5hYSwxAxN8CwKcImYv8CqMQ/s1600/stained-glass.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>In a footnote to <i>Most Famous Short Film of All Time</i>, I wrote:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Literary critic Frank Kermode in <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780195136128" target="_blank">The Sense of an Ending</a></i> (1965) said stories need satisfying endings, just as the Christian story offers an ending that provides a meaning to everything that came before. <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781324035947" target="_blank">Dara Horn dissents</a>, saying that Jewish storytelling recognizes that we 'cannot be true to the human experience while pretending to make sense of the world,' and so a story may instead serve as 'the beginning of the search for meaning.'"</p></blockquote>
<p>I recently came across this reflection by Rachel Klein:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Where apocalypse narratives are primarily concerned with the restructuring and healing of society writ large after tragedy, time loops focus on the personal growth of an individual by having the person relive their experiences until they learn the lessons required to move on."<br>
— "<a href="https://www.heyalma.com/a-case-for-why-time-loops-are-inherently-jewish/" target="_blank">A Case for Why Time Loops Are Inherently Jewish</a>": These cyclical stories, from 'Russian Doll' to 'Palm Springs,' are the Jewish answer to the Christian apocalypse narrative. Rachel Klein, HeyAlma, June 13, 2022</p></blockquote>
<p>It's likely that all cultures and religions have some sense of <i>the life cycle</i>, that is, of each generation <i>as</i> a cycle, and of each year as cyclical too. But Judaism, unlike Christianity, doesn't layer on any focus on the supposed end of history. There's just the cycle itself.</p>
<p>There are endings, though.</p>
<blockquote><p>"The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation ... likely reinforced the idea that the end times would inevitably be sudden, and total. All these years and millennia later most of us still haven’t learned the painful truth that most ends, even most apocalypses, are gradual, painful, drawn out and sometimes ongoing. If we don’t learn the truth about the end of the world, and worlds ending, the apocalypse may rest eternally on the horizon, ever-present, always informing our lives in numerous ways, but never quite occurring. And the truth is that worlds are ending as we speak. Our own world, your own world, could also end; it might already be falling apart."<br>
— "<a href="https://www.jphilll.com/p/the-apocalypse-is-not-the-end" target="_blank">The Apocalypse is not the End</a>," Joshua P. Hill, New Means (Substack), December 30, 2023</p></blockquote>
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Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-16214293078846008912023-12-17T19:01:00.007-05:002023-12-29T17:10:21.705-05:00Is everything fair game for science? Even niceness itself?<p>Here's a new paper:</p>
<p><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2301642120" target="_blank">Prosocial motives underlie scientific censorship by scientists: A perspective and research agenda</a><br>
<b>Authors:</b> Cory J. Clark, Lee Jussim, Komi Frey, Sean T. Stevens, Musa al-Gharbi, Karl Aquino, J. Michael Bailey, Nicole Barbaro, Roy F. Baumeister, April Bleske-Rechek, David Buss, Stephen Ceci, Marco Del Giudice, Peter H. Ditto, Joseph P. Forgas, David C. Geary, Glenn Geher, Sarah Haider, Nathan Honeycutt, Hrishikesh Joshi, Anna I. Krylov, Elizabeth Loftus, Glenn Loury, Louise Lu, Michael Macy, Chris C. Martin, John McWhorter, Geoffrey Miller, Pamela Paresky, Steven Pinker, Wilfred Reilly, Catherine Salmon, Steve Stewart-Williams, Philip E. Tetlock, Wendy M. Williams, Anne E. Wilson, Bo M. Winegard, George Yancey, and William von Hippel.<br>
November 20, 2023<br>
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<br>
120 (48) e2301642120</p>
<p>I became aware of it because Megan McArdle wrote an opinion column for the Washington Post, "<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/12/12/academia-self-censorship-jerks-journalism/" target="_blank">The world could use more jerks</a>." December 12, 2023.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjyC5RZuOV-OTUOhWq32UN3_mtYSAfNXO64heboR5REFmddiVJuwiWfVyAg9ZBYtnXezaxEdVEWaadRcRqW8uHnnwwotI8oPu55ztRcE-BZmqtB7QGoSz5UwRipyfTpWdnWxZhTYG7dxwZH7PHgipgQbokIoIhhsXUIHBrj0-iVhX4F4shgzXSq5sYYcY/s1600/godtheexplainer.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="cartoon of bearded white man god with the caption 'the explainer'" border="0" width="60%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjyC5RZuOV-OTUOhWq32UN3_mtYSAfNXO64heboR5REFmddiVJuwiWfVyAg9ZBYtnXezaxEdVEWaadRcRqW8uHnnwwotI8oPu55ztRcE-BZmqtB7QGoSz5UwRipyfTpWdnWxZhTYG7dxwZH7PHgipgQbokIoIhhsXUIHBrj0-iVhX4F4shgzXSq5sYYcY/s1600/godtheexplainer.jpg"/></a></div>
<p>Yes, the paper seems to be saying that there are facts, and there is niceness, and niceness is often just covering up the facts, and if we were more tolerant of jerks then the jerks would show us the truth.</p>
<p>The paper's abstract defines "scientific censorship" as "actions aimed at obstructing particular scientific ideas from reaching an audience for reasons other than low scientific quality." <i>Any</i> actions? Yes. Having a personal filter is self-censorship. Being deliberately nice is self-censorship. That's the definition.</p>
<p>A key problem here, for me, is that "low scientific quality" isn't defined. One scientist might say that an entire research idea is untenable for ethical reasons, which also means it's untenable for <i>scientific</i> reasons, and the research would be of low scientific quality if it were to proceed. The other scientist might say, no, ethics has nothing to do with scientific quality, and thus they deem the first scientist to have self-censored.</p>
<p>The paper's conclusion isn't really a conclusion. It says that the many co-authors disagree on "whether and where scholars should “draw the line” on inquiry." Nonetheless, they claim they "all agree" that science "would be better situated to resolve these debates, if—instead of arguing in circles based on conflicting intuitions—we spent our time collecting relevant data." I don't believe they mean relevant data on the myriad unique topics of scientific interest, but rather on the meta-topic; that is, they want "better science on scientific censorship" so they can better answer their own question. Anyway, see previous paragraph for the meta-problem here.</p>
<p>McArdle, for her part, in the Washington Post column, wants to expand the message to all writers. She says:</p>
<blockquote><p>"These professions [journalism and academia] used to be sheltered workshops for those kinds of 'jerks': naturally distrustful folks who like asking uncomfortable questions and experiencing an uncontrollable urge to say whatever they’ve been told not to. These character traits don’t make people popular at parties, but they might well help them ferret out untruths, deconstruct popular pieties and dismantle conventional wisdom."</p></blockquote>
<p>As she puts it: "Unfortunately, the universe isn’t here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds."</p>
<p>Crucially, she adds: "Jerks were never the majority, which would be chaos. But they were a teaspoon of leavening..." In other words, <i>some</i> people have permission to be jerks. Not <i>all people</i>. Who will be in the elect few who receive social permission to be rudely contrarian and are perceived as experts simply because of their attitude, and who will be in the majority of sad amateurs who are tone-policed and shut down for expressing a difference of opinion? Ay, there's the rub. Plainly, she reserves the right to be a contrarian. It's her newspaper column, after all. She's the leavening that will transform the critics on whom her voice is overlaid. The transformation will be non-chaotic, we are to feel assured of that.</p>
<p>She quotes Musa al-Gharbi who, readers may discover, has a forthcoming book: <i>We Have Never Been Woke: Social Justice Discourse, Inequality and the Rise of a New Elite</i>.</p>
<p>She also plugs the new book <i>The Canceling of the American Mind</i> by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott.</p>
<p>On which note, take a look at this Amazon review for <i>The Canceling of the American Mind</i>. This is what McArdle is asking for, right? Truth-telling while kind of being a jerk? The world is vastly improved now?</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHghBKif1cUe3d5zuMoSDTgr9C9Ml3TLj5comAc4X1DyrTyBuTSS_HktgHluMXzR06kkwoSgxX9plouHEbStQkwChAKzZpLM__c08zBQk-x41f68Xm1mOnJneF7p0j5aBFr5TxZo-QZN1JTPVzaPbkkAJ2UcJHZFHa7nD1-cmVJ13CKRSIEHHieg3BwUA/s1600/review.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Dec 15, 2023 book review left on Amazon: Well I'm listening to this audiobook, and while I agree with the book's premise and heard about this on Bill Maher's show, I absolutely cannot stand the Gen-Alpha trailing fry-voiced narration. I realize Ricki is a co-author, but she and Greg should have had the good sense to hire a PROFESSIONAL. When I hear this kind of voice in commercials with that creaking trailing fry-tone so popular with young women, I dive for the mute button. Seriously, if you step through the audio you'll hear creak 7 out of 8 times. This is why people hire professionals, Greg and Ricki. I'll have to read the Kindle version so my ears can stop bleeding. If I had listened to a sample I wouldn't have used a credit for the audio book. Lesson learned, so next time I will listen to a narration sample first. Great subject though. I read 'The Coddling of the American Mind' and it was fantastic, but I cannot abide over 7 hours of Gen-Alpha fry tones, with every sentence trailing into pure dolphin-level creak. Ricki, I recommend a voice coach. I'm not even kidding. It'll give you far more gravitas for your good ideas when speaking." border="0" width="99%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHghBKif1cUe3d5zuMoSDTgr9C9Ml3TLj5comAc4X1DyrTyBuTSS_HktgHluMXzR06kkwoSgxX9plouHEbStQkwChAKzZpLM__c08zBQk-x41f68Xm1mOnJneF7p0j5aBFr5TxZo-QZN1JTPVzaPbkkAJ2UcJHZFHa7nD1-cmVJ13CKRSIEHHieg3BwUA/s1600/review.png"/></a></div>
<p>Related, on this blog: <a href="https://disruptivedissertation.blogspot.com/2023/06/open-justice-debate-harpers-letter.html">2020 "Open Letter on Justice and Open Debate" in Harper's</a></p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-54335727214868947292023-12-10T08:08:00.005-05:002023-12-10T08:12:20.085-05:00On political disappointment and anger<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNohbFfZG6PrrWvND0RQd2X2wn4i_MBfWZRFUGnEum2MU-iMBt2ufbFSn-RvnIS5BkvwGtk_88l5XG_quGB8z50N-Kfj1VmR9BqlRMpTDTdA2Hpo7eoZU-yEyYPoY9zQue6oJ1dD7O5Z4i0PBe7qInkuag-NqA64vKhOMK-ITLj7rOAzGFtoTSIB85zo/s1600/image.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="sculpture of two people touching or fighting" border="0" width="70%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidNohbFfZG6PrrWvND0RQd2X2wn4i_MBfWZRFUGnEum2MU-iMBt2ufbFSn-RvnIS5BkvwGtk_88l5XG_quGB8z50N-Kfj1VmR9BqlRMpTDTdA2Hpo7eoZU-yEyYPoY9zQue6oJ1dD7O5Z4i0PBe7qInkuag-NqA64vKhOMK-ITLj7rOAzGFtoTSIB85zo/s1600/image.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>Disappointment</h2>
<p>Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of <i>Jewish Currents</i>, wrote in the magazine's newsletter on December 9, 2023:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The Marxist philosopher Michael Löwy explores doom’s constructive potential in a <a href="https://www.radicalphilosophyarchive.com/issue-files/rp80_article2_walterbenjaminsurrealism_lowy.pdf" target="_blank">reflection</a> on the German Jewish theorist Walter Benjamin’s <a href="https://monoskop.org/images/a/a0/Benjamin_Walter_1929_1978_Surrealism_The_Last_Snapshot_of_the_European_Intelligentsia.pdf" target="_blank">urgent plea</a> for the 'organization of pessimism,' in which that affect is understood not as passive defeatism, but rather as 'an active, practical and ‘organized’' stance 'that is totally dedicated to preventing, by all means possible, the advent of the worst.'"</blockquote>
<p>Angel goes on, pointing out Sara Marcus's recent <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/a-century-of-disappointment" target="_blank">interview</a> describing, in Angel's words, "the last 2,000 years of Jewish history is a lesson in the creative possibilities of loss." Marcus said in that interview:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The whole history of Judaism after 70 CE is about having lost the structure of the Temple and ritualistically voicing a desire to get it back, while at the same time building a completely other structure that’s rhizomatic — iterative, decentered — and incredibly durable and flexible. To continue elaborating that structure while never taking our eyes off the fact of loss, and in fact keeping active a longing for the lost object, grounds Jews in a profoundly generative historical experience of disappointment."</p></blockquote>
<p>What can we generate from this?</p>
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<h2>People are not things, and it's OK to be angry</h2>
<p>A.R. Moxon wrote on October 29, 2023: "All people have an intrinsic and indestructible worth that cannot be measured." We assign value to things, yes, but people "are not things." And so he goes on to say of the U.S. healthcare system:</p>
<blockquote><p>"It’s <i>very</i> profitable. Some people think this means it is the very best. I’m not kidding! They really think that, and will tell you so without blushing, even though we can all see that it costs us more than any other developed country, and returns worse outcomes, and wipes people out financially every single day. And if you suggest that maybe our healthcare system should <i>not</i> be designed to wipe people out, they ask you how you intend to <i>pay</i> for a system that is designed to heal people instead, which is how you know that deep down, perhaps without telling themselves, they have decided that it is sick people who should have to pay for being sick, have on some level decided that sick people <i>deserve</i> to be wiped out as they are.</p>
<p>This is a very popular belief, I’ve found. It’s one diametrically opposed to the great truth about indestructible and inherent human worth.</p>
<p>And so, I think the appropriate response to this belief is anger."</p></blockquote>
<h2>Resuming the theme: Every life is worthy, and it's OK to be angry</h2>
<p>Moxon continued on November 19, 2023:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The idea here is that all human beings’ lives carry an immeasurable and indestructible worth, but human societies seem increasingly captured by a lie that insists that human beings must be regularly measured to determine if their life is still deserved. One common yardstick used to measure the value of human life is the profit motive, which cares nothing for the good of society; it cares only for growth. Just as unregulated water seeks the most efficient path to its own level, so unregulated profit seeks the most efficient path to the most profit possible, and will run through society the same way a burst water main on the top floor will run through the walls of a house. The most efficient path to profit happens to involve monetizing basic human need — healthcare and water and shelter — which of course ties profit to the immeasurable value of life, upon which an unregulated profit motive can set whatever price it likes, and does, and thus annihilates human beings by the thousands and millions every year, every month, every week.</p>
<p>And so the great lie — that life must be earned — makes products of our lives. It consumes humans for the benefit of wealth, enforces a false insecurity upon us all, divides us into those who deserve life and those who don’t. In this way, the great lie forms the basis of supremacy — the idea that some people matter and the rest do not — which makes our human systems vulnerable to takeover by the most malicious types of supremacist; for example, the white conservative evangelical Christian Nationalists who now are now broadcasting their clear intent to establish a fascist authoritarian rule in my country, the United States."</p></blockquote>
<p>Anger, he goes on, is an appropriate response — if it's <i>observant</i>, <i>restorative</i>, and <i>expectant</i>. In other words: pay attention to what's really being said, replace these falsehoods with truths, and be hopeful that we can and must make a better world.</p>
<h2>Sources</h2>
<p>Arielle Angel, <i>Jewish Currents</i>, <a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/newsletter/a-hanukkah-message-from-editor-in-chief-arielle-angel" target="_blank">email newsletter, December 9, 2023</a></p>
<p>A.R. Moxon in The Reframe (Substack):<br>
"<a href="https://armoxon.substack.com/p/an-appropriate-anger" target="_blank">An Appropriate Anger</a>," October 29, 2023<br>
"<a href="https://armoxon.substack.com/p/channels-of-rage" target="_blank">Channels of Rage</a>," November 19, 2023</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-37765162844635643002023-12-02T18:47:00.006-05:002023-12-02T18:55:58.176-05:00Unexpected, unrepeatable, embraceable: 'Fluke' by Brian Klaas<p>Who we are and what happens: these are inextricably linked. If we care about an event, it's because it happened to someone, and that someone — we tend to believe — must have played a role in it. This is how we form narratives, including the narrative of our own agency.</p>
<p><i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781668006528" target="_blank">Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters</a></i> is about this.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAfQ5CfpvzNkxjFqW73e5utwPYW4cVRJ02Y2k7OCLTpfNar6q_4x4g4irIKVTgbpZdY4Ab26FzXjnokxKwy6DaiqUMslcK7RmJxXluqyRwieKoMjMMnCR4AgQ396IUhtCmh7J2pV5-onpr_shLMe4B9gz32F0MvM4zOPGzRigz9V64Uvz9KtiwnrdVcCE/s1600/fluke.webp" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="detail from the book cover of Fluke, with an arrow deviating from a U-shaped path" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAfQ5CfpvzNkxjFqW73e5utwPYW4cVRJ02Y2k7OCLTpfNar6q_4x4g4irIKVTgbpZdY4Ab26FzXjnokxKwy6DaiqUMslcK7RmJxXluqyRwieKoMjMMnCR4AgQ396IUhtCmh7J2pV5-onpr_shLMe4B9gz32F0MvM4zOPGzRigz9V64Uvz9KtiwnrdVcCE/s1600/fluke.webp"/></a></div>
<hr>
<p>The author is <a href="https://brianpklaas.com/" target="_blank">Brian Klaas</a>, a professor of global politics at University College London.</p>
<p>(<i>I received an advance review copy from <a href="https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/303803" target="_blank">NetGalley</a>. </i>Fluke<i> will be published by Scribner in January.</i>)</p>
<hr>
<p>Anything can change the course of our lives. A cloud moves, and a plane doesn’t take off or changes its flight path. It matters who is or isn’t on the plane, whether the plane crashes, or where the airmen drop the bomb.</p>
<p>We know that chance occurrences make a difference in the outcome, yet we resist this notion, partly because it seems unfair. Some people live, others die, due to luck? We might as well say they were saved or destroyed for no reason at all.</p>
<p>And "no reason" isn't what we mean when we say we want "the real story" of "what happened." With no meaningful connections between who we are and what happens, we can't track a narrative. “We want a rational explanation to make sense of the chaos of life,” Klaas says.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyQ6CtphJWEFUE3_6BEQA6PRoL8cxaVbDBoBtEnYxFXLRWXd6Gfc7MqFc5NONrpCQEJvW_6xAYIw5gMugnsLRvzSw2QO5nAAkSnOh8ow5XfTliazwj91ql_DDh30CRo162een4Rshhgd0g0yTwskYCt4pvpXww76ihnJOet2RNcPzRaCLqQGfojV0xtMo/s1600/forest.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="forest in fog, seen from above" border="0" width="70%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyQ6CtphJWEFUE3_6BEQA6PRoL8cxaVbDBoBtEnYxFXLRWXd6Gfc7MqFc5NONrpCQEJvW_6xAYIw5gMugnsLRvzSw2QO5nAAkSnOh8ow5XfTliazwj91ql_DDh30CRo162een4Rshhgd0g0yTwskYCt4pvpXww76ihnJOet2RNcPzRaCLqQGfojV0xtMo/s1600/forest.jpg"/></a></div>
<center>Image: <a href="https://pixabay.com/photos/forest-trees-fog-conifers-pine-3622519/" target="_blank">Pixabay</a></center>
<p>But these little reasons indeed seem to be the real reasons.</p>
<p>“Nobody tiptoes around with extreme care to make sure not to squish the wrong bug. Few panic about an irrevocably changed future after missing the bus,” Klaas observes. Yet how else, he asks, does the future get made?</p>
<p>If your parents hadn’t met, you wouldn’t be here. The same is true for your ancestors.</p>
<p>"We are the offshoots of a sometimes wonderful, sometimes deeply flawed past," and "our existence is bewilderingly fragile, built upon the shakiest of foundations." An asteroid killed the dinosaurs, which allowed all of us to be born millions of years later, and today you’ve subtly altered the future of humanity based on "whether you stopped to have coffee before you rushed out the door."</p>
<p>Yes, our actions are part of a chain of events. Turtles all the way down.</p>
<p>Could we have acted differently, though? Did we have free will then? <i>Do</i> we have free will, right now, to change anything at all?</p>
<p>When we look for a cause, we often see a fluke. The fluke isn’t nothing. It’s just not the meaning we originally hoped for. It’s something unexpected and unrepeatable, and we can embrace it.</p>
<p><i>Fluke</i> is elegantly readable nonfiction, revolving thorny philosophical questions with ease. It poses the question: What theory makes the most sense to you?</p>
<p>You get to choose what you believe.</p>
<p>Or do you?</p>
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<p>For more, see "<a href="https://medium.com/books-are-our-superpower/fluke-brian-klaas-book-review-9a02f6c610ff?sk=d109a33fbb5276c5c4df4541f67dd9fe" target="_blank"><b>Why Are We Here? Chaos Brought Us Together</b></a>" (9 min read), which Books Are Our Superpower published today.</p>
<hr>
<p>A couple years ago, I wrote about another book by Prof. Klaas: <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781982154103" target="_blank">Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us</a></i>. The article is "<a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/corruptible-brian-klaas-e0ea7aac8e91?sk=c76622ee84da764bfb713967b35bc3f6" target="_blank">Why are powerful people so terrible?</a>" (4 min read).</p>
<hr>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-64775134547794395312023-12-02T09:13:00.006-05:002023-12-02T09:17:30.595-05:00Enfield: 'I love how much I hate the word burnout'<p>Here are the three passages from <i>Holy American Burnout!</i>, a new release by Split/Lip Press, that most spoke to me.</p>
<p>Because I have thought about religious devotion in the context of moving my body:</p>
<blockquote><p>"It's not that I don't believe in God; it's that I prefer bodies in motion, and I want my belief in God translated into reverential movement. God has always seemed inert, though I've been told He moves in us all." (p. 65)</p></blockquote>
<p>Because anger is a valid response and it opens the door to change:</p>
<blockquote><p>"Yes, to be a teacher and relatively conscious in america is to be in a rage almost all the time. Do you suffer in the mind or take up arms against the sea of troubles? You may recognize that the system is built on a one-size-fits-all curriculum that is given minor adjustments to suit the needs of your classroom. You may see how american education prepares certain individuals for the traps awaiting them outside school walls, and you may want them to understand both those traps as well as Shakespeare. You may be angry at those in power who continue to perpetuate these trappings, but you aren't faced with them on a regular basis. You're instead faced with the students who don't warrant or gain from your anger and can, in fact, be hurt by it. So you require something more like grace to navigate this system, or else the bitterness in your heart might melt and resolve you into a lifeless puddle trampled upon by the dancing feet of children." (p. 93)</p></blockquote>
<p>Because commute leads to comm[b]u[s]t[ion]e:</p>
<blockquote><p>"What's in a commute? When does it begin or end? Sure, the word implies an ending at either your workplace or home, but since we volley back and forth, maybe the entirety of our working lives is spent in one, prolonged commute. Such an individual exercise. We reach out occasionally and catch the attention or sympathies of a stranger or a co-worker kind enough to lend a ride, but in the end, we all have our own destinations. We can't stop moving.</p>
<p>I love how much I hate the word burnout. It's perfectly visceral. I can feel the burning of my muscles and the heated tension in my spine. Still, the machine grinds on, setting the transmission ablaze — burnt out. Burnout is frequently attributed to teachers, first year teachers especially, but it seems to me the greater american condition, bestowed upon anyone with a commute. * * * I see it there along the horizon too, a great american burnout. If you work the gears too hard, eventually the transmission will erupt. The car will have no choice but to idle.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Holy american Burnout, grant us the stillness of your fire this time." (p. 115)</p></blockquote>
<p>Sean Enfield, <a href="https://www.splitlippress.com/product-page/holy-american-burnout-by-sean-enfield" target="_blank">Holy American Burnout!</a>, Split/Lip Press, 2023</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGk6wvdb12ChVRLeoVCDqfAeFC11MUCMewhR9SldMKv7qUjHKS4FJz0M4AikarbmYxqkFyySLvS2vsRpo4-eN7ZgzMTBjFMHW1Mzm3J26ufWmYFAXG3639xYEPfsrYtDVfoxoofEocffDgzd4X0yX5JOY81mms1sx23BAv1v9eDhqNV8dNF2j79ztiLWQ/s1600/burnout.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Holy American Burnout! book cover" border="0" data-original-height="750" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGk6wvdb12ChVRLeoVCDqfAeFC11MUCMewhR9SldMKv7qUjHKS4FJz0M4AikarbmYxqkFyySLvS2vsRpo4-eN7ZgzMTBjFMHW1Mzm3J26ufWmYFAXG3639xYEPfsrYtDVfoxoofEocffDgzd4X0yX5JOY81mms1sx23BAv1v9eDhqNV8dNF2j79ztiLWQ/s1600/burnout.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>See also</h2>
<p>Enfield mentions Baldwin.</p>
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Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-79549930870497102612023-11-26T12:48:00.001-05:002023-11-26T12:48:10.164-05:00'Antisemitism in the Gothic and Jewish Horror' with Dr Mary Going (YouTube)<p>Antisemitism in the Gothic and Jewish Horror with Dr Mary Going. A talk for Romancing the Gothic, 2023.</p>
<p>She talks about antisemitic tropes in Dracula, Nosferatu, and Paul Wegener's surviving golem film.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Fii_MVR2CIQ?si=oO-JU55i1FaobKOf" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>One observation of mine</h2>
<p>A similarity (in my view) between Jewish and transgender identity: You feel stereotyped as someone who will do "the Jewish thing" or "the transgender thing," and you want to strike forth on your own path, but you may also be inclined to hide your identity in the process because you feel some threat or because you're imitating people who have felt that threat, and maybe that survival behavior is part of the identity."
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9WIMw9c1-O-0xMUgOfd1xslUzHUkJctIgXfOXi6Q6wTIa6phEPj7q9ATBKyoA6WqM81KqJaBa2xMGAyFu5KdCYN4ez3hPPSwaVgBYgNJHNWFm8fwjuZCJlAhh8BPoS6PBtIkk9YgVh_Zj4mUMznI81Z2tDJ_0y3GJe690JrI1zQAJeUb1j6Hp-xPkjKY/s1600/identity.png" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="video still quoting Sean Wainsteim, maker of Demon Box: 'As a Jewish filmmaker you don't want to just make Holocaust films. That's not a thing you want to just do. I generally avoid any type of Jewish content, and I don't know if that's because of the idea of like trying to hide your identity ot survive.'" border="0" width="80%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9WIMw9c1-O-0xMUgOfd1xslUzHUkJctIgXfOXi6Q6wTIa6phEPj7q9ATBKyoA6WqM81KqJaBa2xMGAyFu5KdCYN4ez3hPPSwaVgBYgNJHNWFm8fwjuZCJlAhh8BPoS6PBtIkk9YgVh_Zj4mUMznI81Z2tDJ_0y3GJe690JrI1zQAJeUb1j6Hp-xPkjKY/s1600/identity.png"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-83059056226298281482023-11-11T11:12:00.001-05:002023-11-11T11:12:36.959-05:00What it looks like to interrupt a Nazi rally ('A Night at the Garden')<p>Marshall Curry's 7-minute documentary short, "A Night at the Garden," is on YouTube.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/T9gFqNw2sk0?si=mBhxayh65oq9F9sc" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>YouTube has age-restricted it, so you may need to go to YouTube to acknowledge the age-restriction before you can view it.</p>
<p>It shows a Jewish man interrupting a Nazi rally in New York's Madison Square Garden in 1939.</p>
<p>Learn more at <a href="https://anightatthegarden.com/" target="_blank">anightatthegarden.com</a></p>
<p>By the way... "<a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/american-nazi-propaganda-prequel-1b395873b6b1?sk=e9432a06c62af935dfc146d7b86adbac" target="_blank">Who Paid For Millions of Fascist Pamphlets in the US in 1940?</a>" Nazi Germany did, explained in ‘Prequel’ by Rachel Maddow. It's a 7-minute read on Medium. I've unpaywalled the link for you.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjef52yI9v_5mFO0oQHo6XoX8s5DpOaZHIBNyVYkTFtFTElyOWpCVMSU9Z3FJhlVx4diClP-WWBNFFFyCO_41QFzS4BR92W83CNYKU7g34xoDTEi6iwNfsraa4NXrc_IV6FIAf0L0LxojLV7mROkhfy-x1LOqNkxDfvkypOFxjgS1ysoz5atYpzmolB/s1200/birkenau.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Train tracks at the Birkenau camp" border="0" width="90%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjef52yI9v_5mFO0oQHo6XoX8s5DpOaZHIBNyVYkTFtFTElyOWpCVMSU9Z3FJhlVx4diClP-WWBNFFFyCO_41QFzS4BR92W83CNYKU7g34xoDTEi6iwNfsraa4NXrc_IV6FIAf0L0LxojLV7mROkhfy-x1LOqNkxDfvkypOFxjgS1ysoz5atYpzmolB/s400/birkenau.jpg"/></a></div>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-34918539855652392532023-10-29T14:37:00.003-04:002023-10-29T14:37:45.226-04:00'Kefitzat haderech': The path is miraculously made short<p>From the Talmud:</p>
<blockquote><p>"The Sages taught in a baraita with regard to land contracting to shorten a journey: For three individuals the land contracted, and each one miraculously reached his destination quickly: Eliezer, servant of Abraham, and Jacob our forefather, and Abishai, son of Zeruiah. The Gemara elaborates: The case of Abishai, son of Zeruiah, is that which we said. The case of Eliezer, servant of Abraham, is as it is written: “And I came that day to the well” (Genesis 24:42). His intention was to say to the members of Rebecca’s family that on that day he left Canaan and on the same day he arrived, to underscore the miraculous nature of his undertaking on behalf of Abraham."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Sanhedrin.95a.16?lang=bi" target="_blank">Sanhedrin 95a</a></p></blockquote>
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Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-11443865895284096922023-10-14T08:56:00.079-04:002024-03-26T21:20:12.449-04:00People who are angry deserve a hearing: On war in Gaza<h2>Gaza Damage Proxy Map</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://ee-ollielballinger.projects.earthengine.app/view/gazadamage" target="_blank">visualization project</a> by Earth Engine Apps.</p>
<p>People I'm reading today on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict and the war in Gaza.</p>
<h2>Ori Hanan Weisberg</h2>
<p>Job is devastated by his losses and demands a hearing with G-d. In <a href="https://www.sefaria.org/Job.4?lang=bi&with=Navigation&lang2=en" target="_blank">Chapters 4–5</a>, his friend Eliphaz eloquently explains that anyone who is truly innocent can turn their prayers to G-d and be healed. But later in the Book of Job, G-d is displeased with Eliphaz for trying to so quickly close the book on Job's complaint.</p>
<p><a href="https://reedsy.com/ori-weisberg" target="_blank">Ori Hanan Weisberg</a> tells us (<a href="https://www.facebook.com/ori.weisberg.1232/posts/pfbid02x2TtdpgA9WfmGTpXyZ63prAjeLDhx1aSXCwzKvLAVmoLZuaokhZP4vM2LxJD1p3Vl" target="_blank">on Facebook, October 11</a>) about G-d's reaction. G-d "doesn’t say 'yep, well done Elushkeh, you got it right my brilliant child and your benighted brother Job just needs to listen to you.' Rather, as the Rambam emphasizes, God rebukes him for being too invested in his own argument and correctness."</p>
<p>G-d seems to believe, Weisberg says — citing the Jewish historian Amos Funkenstein — that Job has the right "to demand a hearing" about this situation if he believes it's terribly unfair.</p>
<h3>A hearing</h3>
<p>Weisberg lists many things about which he's angry right now, including:</p>
<hr>
<blockquote><p>"I'm angry that someone next to whom I sat Shabbat after Shabbat for years in synagogue went to a music festival, had his arm blown off with a grenade, applied his own tourniquet, and now is a hostage in Gaza with no medical attention to his grave injury."</p></blockquote>
<hr>
<blockquote><p>"I'm angry that thousands of Palestinian children will be killed and traumatized in the next days and weeks."</p></blockquote>
<hr>
<blockquote><p>"I'm angry at myself that this is the world and childhood I’ve given my three children."</p></blockquote>
<hr>
<p>People shouldn't pretend they know the answer, especially, Weisberg says, if they've "never stepped foot here, haven’t read a 100th of what I've read, who don’t interact and work with Palestinians every day...There is no justice without humility."
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQoTxzBq-l_uCAmQ8JTZVr31uP4TCBSSm1DUVjg98jRVG32MxcQ2VF_DZbWc481HuDuzGG6tWa72_TIb8guHihA8aElcxbHvovaiOco0tTXDwCnuBHrXIAqnnjMimxW9EiQDaCLEWeuPMVB428czdT-LxfD2CPdgOcCYgxY4etOfW3zVbwn4_fHLzWlo/s1600/forest.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="trees" border="0" width="40%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQoTxzBq-l_uCAmQ8JTZVr31uP4TCBSSm1DUVjg98jRVG32MxcQ2VF_DZbWc481HuDuzGG6tWa72_TIb8guHihA8aElcxbHvovaiOco0tTXDwCnuBHrXIAqnnjMimxW9EiQDaCLEWeuPMVB428czdT-LxfD2CPdgOcCYgxY4etOfW3zVbwn4_fHLzWlo/s1600/forest.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>Sahar Vardi</h2>
<blockquote><p>"'Dual loyalty' is seeing both this and that with tears in your eyes.</p>
<p>It's that moment when you talk to a friend who doesn’t know whether their relatives are dead or kidnapped and what they should even hope for, and to see the helplessness, the fear, the deep pain. And a moment later, it’s talking to a friend from Gaza who can only say that every night is now the scariest night of his life; that he calculates his chances, and those of his daughters, of waking up alive the next morning.</p>
<p>'Dual loyalty' is feeling the heartbreak of this and also of that.</p>
<p>It is to hold this moment between the heartbreak and pain and shock over the total destruction of Nir Oz and to think about all the people there, and at the same time, to feel the horror over the impending total destruction of Shuja’iyya and to think about all the people there."</p>
Sahar Vardi, <a href="https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/dual-loyalty-2/" target="_blank">Dual Loyalty</a>, Times of Israel, October 11, 2023</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQoTxzBq-l_uCAmQ8JTZVr31uP4TCBSSm1DUVjg98jRVG32MxcQ2VF_DZbWc481HuDuzGG6tWa72_TIb8guHihA8aElcxbHvovaiOco0tTXDwCnuBHrXIAqnnjMimxW9EiQDaCLEWeuPMVB428czdT-LxfD2CPdgOcCYgxY4etOfW3zVbwn4_fHLzWlo/s1600/forest.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="trees" border="0" width="40%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQoTxzBq-l_uCAmQ8JTZVr31uP4TCBSSm1DUVjg98jRVG32MxcQ2VF_DZbWc481HuDuzGG6tWa72_TIb8guHihA8aElcxbHvovaiOco0tTXDwCnuBHrXIAqnnjMimxW9EiQDaCLEWeuPMVB428czdT-LxfD2CPdgOcCYgxY4etOfW3zVbwn4_fHLzWlo/s1600/forest.jpg"/></a></div>
<h2>A.R. Moxon</h2>
<p>A.R. Moxon today, regarding why it's hard to talk about the massacre of Israelis and Palestinians:</p>
<blockquote>"To say one makes you sick means you’re taking up for the other, or vice versa. To say both make you sick risks engagement in a both-siderism that ignores important context about aggression and oppression that brought us here, ignores the reality that every struggle for liberation has involved a fight of some kind."</blockquote>
<p>But massacres, he says, make him feel</p>
<blockquote>"sick in a way that defies context. I don’t know what other reaction to have, nor does it seem an unhealthy reaction to massacre. We are a species defined at least in part by our ability to form ideas. It strikes me that we must have better ideas than massacre..."</blockquote>
<p>Wanting neither Israelis nor Palestinians to be massacred</p>
<blockquote>"seems more precarious than it should, like trying to balance on a tightrope in a stiff wind. For many, not wanting one self-evidently means you want the other, or vice versa, even though it seems axiomatic that the only way to hold either idea is to hold both. Massacre seems to be on its own side, and seems to only want more massacre."</blockquote>
<p>Is it that being pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli are sides 1 and 2, and being pro-massacre and anti-massacre are sides 3 and 4? No, because "massacred citizens do not strike me as ‘both sides’ of an equation even if they sit on opposite sides of a border or a wall." It is that the <i>real</i> two sides here are pro-massacre and anti-massacre, and nationalities and ethnicities are, in comparison, not the sides we should be focusing on.</p>
<p>But he feels speechless. ("Speechlessness," I note, is a theme on which Naomi Klein recently wrote.)</p>
<blockquote>"When you publish your opinions and people read them, there comes a certain expectation you’ll produce useful opinions, even if it’s only a self-aggrandizing expectation that you put upon yourself. Lately I’ve been without words. The daily news gives me that same sick feeling as I once had some twenty years ago, even makes me wonder why I’m off on vacation instead of doing something about *waves hands at everything* yet it’s not clear what I could do, and I fear that whatever opinion I might offer could not possible be useful. Perhaps by the time we get to the end I’ll have proved that fear well-founded."</blockquote>
<p>Once you start to tell the story, you realize that history goes infinitely far back. But for the people to whom it's happening right now, the context shifts, and they feel that they're reacting to it rather than having participated in its causes.</p>
<blockquote>"For somebody, every rocket is the first rocket; every massacre is the first massacre."</blockquote>
<p>Finally, while we don't want to treat others as our "rhetorical armor," nor treat their identities as "monolithic" or "fungible" with some other position, nor demand that they "provide definitive answers for the rest of us to utilize about matters of deep complexity and grave tragedy" — still, it's important to listen to them: "I don’t see how we expect to attend to these matters without listening to Jewish voices, any more than we could do so without listening to Palestinian ones."</p>
<p>"<a href="https://armoxon.substack.com/p/hurting-the-right-people" target="_blank">Hurting The Right People</a>": It has happened before, but there is nothing to compare it to now. Spirits of harm and lack; spirits of solidarity and abundance. A.R. Moxon, The Reframe (Substack), October 14, 2023</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQoTxzBq-l_uCAmQ8JTZVr31uP4TCBSSm1DUVjg98jRVG32MxcQ2VF_DZbWc481HuDuzGG6tWa72_TIb8guHihA8aElcxbHvovaiOco0tTXDwCnuBHrXIAqnnjMimxW9EiQDaCLEWeuPMVB428czdT-LxfD2CPdgOcCYgxY4etOfW3zVbwn4_fHLzWlo/s1600/forest.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="trees" border="0" width="40%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlQoTxzBq-l_uCAmQ8JTZVr31uP4TCBSSm1DUVjg98jRVG32MxcQ2VF_DZbWc481HuDuzGG6tWa72_TIb8guHihA8aElcxbHvovaiOco0tTXDwCnuBHrXIAqnnjMimxW9EiQDaCLEWeuPMVB428czdT-LxfD2CPdgOcCYgxY4etOfW3zVbwn4_fHLzWlo/s1600/forest.jpg"/></a></div>
<blockquote><p>"I understand why we talk about innocents in war. My heart has been crushed to dust because of non-combatant human lives reduced to collateral damage. I also know there are people— particularly men— who are uniquely culpable for others’ suffering. I still struggle, however, when we start building mental models for which human beings do or don’t deserve to die. I know where that road leads. It leads to this exact place we’re in right now. We had to burn the village to save it.'</p>
<p>Here’s a belief I hold deeply: There is no taxonomy of suffering. Every family’s grief is equally debilitating. An Israeli parent’s tears are no less heart wrenching than a Palestinian family’s tears.</p>
Here’s another one: Asymmetry is real. 3.8 billion dollars in U.S. military aid a year is real. Barricades are real. Occupation is real. Every death is a tragedy, but for years now there have been more deaths on one side of the border than the other."<br>
— <a href="https://thewhitepages.substack.com/p/ive-been-thinking-about-the-people" target="_blank">I've been thinking about the people who set themselves on fire</a>: Flawed offerings, a month into war, Garrett Bucks, November 14, 2023</blockquote>
<p>Bucks recommends the <a href="https://uscpr.org/" target="_blank">U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights</a>, the Quaker <a href="https://afsc.org/topics/gaza-israel" target="_blank">American Friends Service Committee</a>, and "the Jewish/Arab peace resistance within Israel, particularly the <a href="https://linktr.ee/standingtogether.en" target="_blank">Standing Together</a> movement."</p>
<h2>Talia Lavin</h2>
<p>Lavin reflects on Naomi Klein's Doppelganger. Klein, Lavin says, explains that "the far-right 'mirror world' mocks, coopts and warps language in such a way as to render its opponents speechless." Furthermore:</p>
<blockquote>"Another vector of speechlessness, and of the deconstruction of meaning, is the increasing collapse between our digital selves and our real selves, and a concomitant conflation of what we say online with what we do, and who we are. To post or not to post becomes an artificially heightened decision: Klein calls it 'the quicksand underpinning our age: the confusion between saying/clicking/posting and doing.'"</blockquote>
<p>And Lavin writes:</p>
<blockquote>"'The source of my speechlessness,' Klein writes, 'is a sense of near violent rupture between the world of words and the world beyond them.' The book is extraordinary, but it is Klein’s sharp description of the dual dilemmas of hollowed-out meaning rendering one speechless, and the way the necessity of constructing an ever-present digital self forces one into ceaseless and empty speech, that caught at me, in this moment in particular."</blockquote>
<p>Specifically, at this time:</p>
<blockquote><p>"the doubled self is present in its dark mirror. I feel the urge to speak meaninglessly, and the urge to stay silent, and the senseless notion that not speaking is the same as refraining from action.</p>
<p>It isn’t. I am not an expert on Israel or security or warfare or Hamas or Fatah or the Netanyahu government or the broader geopolitical landscape of the Middle East. What I cling to are the idea that children should not be slaughtered for the sins of their governments, and that I want the people I love to be safe; this is the sum of my opinions."</p></blockquote>
<p>"Speech and Speechlessness": the world of words and the world beyond them. <a href="https://theswordandthesandwich.substack.com/p/speech-and-speechlessness" target="_blank">The Sword and the Sandwich</a> (Substack). October 10, 2023</p>
<h2>Elad Nehorai</h2>
<blockquote><p>"The sickness is authoritarianism. I do not just mean authoritarianism as a government structure, although it manifests this way very often. I mean authoritarianism as a belief system. A worldview. * * * ...the idea that humans do not have inherent worth outside of their subservience to a larger system, leader, and/or goal."</p></blockquote>
<p>and</p>
<blockquote><p>"antisemitism ... is actually just perhaps the most effective narrative to reinforce authoritarianism. ... antisemitism provides the existential threat and constant crisis, along with explanation of all existing problems, that authoritarian leaders and societies crave. ... it is the authoritarian impulse and belief system that is even more dangerous than antisemitism. Even antisemitism is a symptom, a method to justify authoritarianism, not authoritarianism itself."<br>
<a href="https://eladnehorai.substack.com/p/the-enemy-is-authoritarianism" target="_blank">The Enemy is Authoritarianism</a>, Elad Nehorai, Oct 18, 2023</p></blockquote>
<h2>Part of what's happening</h2>
<p><a href="https://apnews.com/article/israel-apartheid-palestinians-occupation-c8137c9e7f33c2cba7b0b5ac7fa8d115" target="_blank">A former Mossad chief says Israel is enforcing an apartheid system in the West Bank</a>, Tia Goldenberg, AP, September 6, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.dci-palestine.org/grave_violations_against_palestinian_children_in_gaza" target="_blank">Grave violations against Palestinian children</a>: UN’s Children and Armed Conflict Agenda. Defense for Children International — Palestine. October 21, 2023.</p>
<p>UN emergency relief chief Martin Griffiths said: "Gaza has simply become uninhabitable."<br>
<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/05/middleeast/gaza-famine-un-warning-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">Famine in Gaza ‘around the corner,’ as people face ‘highest levels of food insecurity ever recorded,’ UN relief chief says</a>, Heather Chen and Eve Brennan, CNN, January 6, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-08-24/h_1e962a4fad64c2814a917a672e963a28" target="_blank">About 1 in 100 people in Gaza has been killed since October 7, Palestinian statistics show</a>. Kareem Khadder, Richard Allen Greene and Ivana Kottasova. CNN. January 8, 2024.</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/famine-looms-in-gaza-israel-war-intl/index.html" target="_blank">‘We are dying slowly:’ Palestinians are eating grass and drinking polluted water as famine looms across Gaza</a> Sana Noor Haq and Rosa Rahimi, CNN, January 30, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/06/gaza-hunger-starvation-malnutrition-aid/" target="_blank">16 children have died of malnutrition in aid-starved Gaza, health officials say</a>, Steve Hendrix and Hajar Harb, Washington Post, March 6, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/children-killed-gaza-higher-years-global-conflict_n_65f1f917e4b09953f2f8a05a" target="_blank">More Children Have Died In Gaza War Than Have Been Killed By Conflict Worldwide In 4 Years</a> “This war is a war on children," UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini said of Israel's months-long offensive in the Palestinian territory. Sanjana Karanth, HuffPost, Mar 13, 2024</p>
<h2>Rabbi Elliot Kukla</h2>
<p>Kukla said in the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-11-17/generational-trauma-gaza-children-holocaust-survivor" target="_blank">LA Times on November 17</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>"Nearly 82 years ago, my father was born in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When he was only 3 weeks old, his own father, Max, was captured and murdered by Nazis; my dad survived because he was hidden by a series of Christian foster homes. I was born in a peaceful time and place — Victoria, Canada, in 1974 — but my own life was shaped by those events that happened decades before my birth.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Growing up, this was what Judaism meant to me: intellectual dissent and peace activism. In rabbinical school, I learned that according to ancient Jewish holy texts, saving a single life is the same as saving a whole world, because each of us contains distinctive cities of relationships, irreplaceable geographies of passions, and deep oceans of memories.</p>
<p>That is one reason more than 140 of my colleagues and I are calling for peace as a part of <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5R3QBUjg2w&t=2s" target="_blank">Rabbis for Ceasefire</a>, along with a swelling Jewish peace movement. However, most major American Jewish organizations support this invasion. It is a profound moral injury for me that the community that taught me to value resistance, peace and the sanctity of each human life is supporting violence and silencing dissent. Many rabbis and other Jewish professionals I know are afraid to speak out for peace and risk being ostracized from family or synagogues or lose funding for their nonprofit organizations."</p></blockquote>
<h2>Israeli expectations</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65295ee8e4b03ea0c004e2a8" target="_blank"><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-isaac-herzog_n_65295ee8e4b03ea0c004e2a8" target="_blank">Israeli President Suggests That Civilians In Gaza Are Legitimate Targets</a></a> “It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Isaac Herzog said as Israel ordered 1.1 million Palestinians to evacuate their homes. Paul Blumenthal, HuffPost, Oct 13, 2023</p>
<p>"<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-05-24/h_5d285a0858c297607712a333492d2c83" target="_blank">Israeli defense minister outlines plan for new phase in Gaza war
</a>," Niamh Kennedy in Dublin and Lauren Izso in Tel Aviv, CNN, January 5, 2024</p>
<h2>Other understandings of Zionism</h2>
<p>If you've grown up hearing about early Zionism that was meant to address antisemitic persecution in Russia and Europe, then it may be "inconceivable that this ideology of liberation and self-determination could have anything in common with colonialism," but over the last century, "Zionism became something fundamentally different." Read: "<a href="https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/false-messiahs/" target="_blank">False Messiahs</a>: How Zionism’s dreams of liberation became entangled with colonialism" by Barnett R. Rubin, Boston Review, January 4, 2024.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/ministers-call-for-resettling-gazas-palestinians-building-settlements-in-strip/" target="_blank">Far-right ministers call to ‘resettle’ Gaza’s Palestinians, build settlements in Strip</a> Arab lawmaker compares statements by party leaders Smotrich and Ben Gvir to Nazi calls for ‘Lebensraum’; Liberman says Israel must reoccupy southern Lebanon to ensure security. Sam Sokol. Times of Israel. 1 January 2024</p>
<blockquote><p>"Back then—in the recent, unreachable past—it was possible [for Westerners] to think that acts so egregious would condemn themselves. Even Israel initially nodded to the idea of red lines, sprinkling flimsy denials over still-smoldering debris—<i>we didn’t strike a hospital, we only kill terrorists, we aren’t using white phosphorus</i> . . . But soon even the thinnest pretense was dropped. <i>Let them watch</i>, the regime seems to say, disseminating its own footage of razed neighborhoods, Palestinians blindfolded and stripped. It has proved to itself that the red line does not exist."</p>
<p>It is gutting to <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/C1EC6oEoMVM/" target="_blank">watch</a> this realization dawn on Gazans’ faces, too.</p>
<p> — “<a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/the-work-of-the-witness" target="_blank">The Work of the Witness</a>”: Three months into a livestreamed genocide, we must ask—what does all this looking do? Sarah Aziza, Jewish Currents.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/benjamin-netanyahu-israel-palestinian-state_n_65a95efee4b076abd7aac36b" target="_blank">Benjamin Netanyahu Says He Opposes Palestinian State In Any Postwar Scenario</a>: The U.S. has called on Israel to scale back its offensive and said that the establishment of a Palestinian state should be part of the “day after.” Najib Jobain, Jack Jeffery, Melanie Lidman. AP, HuffPost, January 18, 2024.</p>
<p>"<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/30/middleeast/israel-undercover-raid-jenin-west-bank-hamas-intl/index.html" target="_blank">Undercover Israeli troops dressed as medical staff kill three militants in West Bank hospital raid, officials say</a>." Abeer Salman, CNN, January 30, 2024<br>
"<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/israeli-forces-kill-3-gunmen-west-bank-hospital-army-says-2024-01-30/" target="_blank">Israeli forces kill 3 Palestinian militants in raid on West Bank hospital</a>," Raneen Sawafta, Reuters, January 30, 2024.</p>
<h2>Political expectations in the US</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-resignation-gaza_n_65306079e4b00565b622b1fb" target="_blank">'I Couldn't Shift Anything': Senior State Department Official Resigns Over Biden's Gaza Policy</a>
Josh Paul, who spent a decade in State's bureau overseeing arms sales, exclusively spoke with HuffPost after quitting over the U.S. approach to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Oct 18, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-administration-gaza-dissent_n_652f42b0e4b0da897ab5c8a6" target="_blank">‘On Thin Ice’: Some Biden Administration Staffers Feel Stifled Discussing Horrors In Gaza</a> Several officials spoke to HuffPost about what one called the United States’ “monstrous disregard for innocent Palestinian lives” ― and the challenge of questioning Israel internally. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Oct 18, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-gaza_n_6531a23ae4b0da897ab75ce4" target="_blank">Exclusive: ‘Mutiny Brewing’ Inside State Department Over Israel-Palestine Policy</a>
Morale is low, and some staffers are preparing to formally express their opposition to President Joe Biden's approach, officials told HuffPost. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Oct 19, 2023</p>
<p><a target="_blank" href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/state-department-israel-hamas-gaza_n_6543a0c4e4b0cde80b8bd72e?m5n">Biden's Israel-Gaza Approach Sidelines State Department, And Officials Fear The Worst</a> A task force on preventing atrocities did not meet until two weeks into the war, and officials say department leaders are telling them their expertise won't affect policy. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Nov 2, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://truthout.org/articles/biden-wants-arms-deals-with-israel-to-be-done-in-complete-secrecy/" target="_blank">Biden Wants Arms Deals With Israel to Be Done in Complete Secrecy</a>. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Josh Paul, a former top State Department official. Sharon Zhang, Truthout, November 2, 2023</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/antony-blinken-state-department-gaza-dissent_n_65458434e4b01b258583ce56" target="_blank">Exclusive: Antony Blinken Held Private Meeting With Officials Who Formally Protested U.S. Gaza Policy</a>
The previously unreported meeting took place on Oct. 26, a former official told HuffPost. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Nov 3, 2023</p>
<p>There are infinite stories about how we got here. Everything is connected. From 2018:<br>
<a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kushner-pushed-inflate-saudi-arms-deal-110-billion/story?id=59418244" target="_blank">Jared Kushner pushed to inflate Saudi arms deal to $110 billion: Sources</a><br>
Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and adviser, pushed the inflated number.<br>
Tara Palmeri<br>
November 26, 2018</p>
<p>The film <i><a href="https://www.israelismfilm.com/" target="_blank">Israelism</a></i> can be streamed worldwide:</p>
<blockquote><p>"When two young American Jews raised to unconditionally love Israel witness the brutal way Israel treats Palestinians, their lives take sharp left turns.</p>
<p>They join a movement of young American Jews battling the old guard to redefine Judaism’s relationship with Israel, revealing a deepening generational divide over modern Jewish identity."</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-strikes-yemen-biden-gaza_n_65a073e9e4b0e696b911200a?if" target="_blank">U.S. And U.K. To Launch Airstrikes On Yemen</a> The Biden administration shared the plan with leaders in Congress on Thursday, a U.S. official told HuffPost. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Jan 11, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/11/politics/us-strikes-houthis-yemen/index.html" target="_blank">US and UK carry out strikes against Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen</a>, Oren Liebermann, Haley Britzky, Natasha Bertrand, Kevin Liptak, Alex Marquardt, MJ Lee and Jennifer Hansler, CNN, January 11, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/biden-saudi-israel-gaza-brett-mcgurk_n_65a19ee2e4b07bd6950cd152" target="_blank">A Top Biden Official Is Pushing An Urgent Post-Gaza Plan That’s Alarming Some Insiders</a>
Brett McGurk is pursuing a proposal to rebuild the Palestinian territory that focuses on a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials told HuffPost. Many say that plan would sow seeds of future instability in the region. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Jan 12, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-gaza-senate-vote-against-human-rights-report_n_65a70499e4b00bbb446d0088" target="_blank">In First Vote On Gaza War, Senate Shields Israel From Human Rights Scrutiny</a>: Though his bill failed, Bernie Sanders put senators on the record on the U.S.-backed military campaign in Gaza. Israeli envoy Michael Herzog visited the Senate before the vote. Akbar Shahid Ahmed & Igor Bobic, HuffPost, Jan 16, 2024</p>
<blockquote>"...while Gaza is razed to the ground, another social media video stops me in my tracks. In it, a gray-haired douchebag has stopped to address some specter off-screen in the middle of the street. “If we killed four thousand Palestinian children,” he says, “you know what? It wasn’t enough!” The only reason you worry about them, the gray-haired douchebag goes on to tell the specter, is because you’re a Hamas-supporting terrorist. Your prophet raped his own daughter, the gray-haired douchebag says. I can take you in — deport you — because you don’t belong here. But even if you manage to stay, he adds, I can get the Mukhabarat back in Egypt to take in your father and pull out his fingernails. And all that can be heard in response, barely audibly, is “Please go.” This is New York City. It turns out that the specter being spoken to is a random hot-dog vendor; the gray-haired douchebag, a former national security adviser — in the Obama administration."<br>
— "<a href="https://www.guernicamag.com/i-ghost/%20" target="_blank">I, Ghost: The West doesn’t give a shit about me</a>." Youssef Rakha. Guernica. January 16, 2024.</blockquote>
<blockquote><p>“You haven’t seen the pictures of all the babies being killed?” one activist asked Mast.<br>
“These are not innocent Palestinian civilians across the world,” Mast replied.<br>
“What about the half-a-million people starving to death?” another asked.<br>
“[They] are people that should go out there and put a government in place that doesn’t go out there and attack Israel on a daily basis,” Mast said.<br>
— <a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brian-mast-palestinian-babies-innocent-civilians-gaza_n_65bbd225e4b05c8779f84791" target="_blank">Babies Killed In Gaza Are ‘Not Innocent Palestinian Civilians,’ House Republican Says</a> It isn’t the first time Rep. Brian Mast (R-Fla.) has questioned the existence of innocent Palestinians. Matt Shuham, HuffPost, Feb 1, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p>There may be no "scale of mass death - certainly elsewhere in the world, and likely at home too - <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/patblanchfield.bsky.social/post/3kl7xiloyc62a" target="_blank">that US society won’t metabolize into business as usual</a>". (Pat Blanchfield, Bluesky, Feb 12, 2024)</p>
<p>"<a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/us-israel-gaza-international-law-war-crimes_n_65cb7662e4b065628a609e5c#" target="_blank">The Biden Administration Is Investigating Israel's Possible War Crimes — Despite Public Claims To The Contrary</a>": White House spokesman John Kirby said last month such probes are not occurring, but sources tell HuffPost U.S. officials have been assessing Israel's possible international law violations for months. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Feb 13, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-02-16/rafah-gaza-hospitals-surgery-israel-bombing-ground-offensive-children" target="_blank">Opinion: I’m an American doctor who went to Gaza. What I saw wasn’t war — it was annihilation</a>. Irfan Galaria. Los Angeles Times. Feb 16, 2024.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-israel-finish-the-problem-gaza_n_65e76ed1e4b0f9d26cac9866" target="_blank">Trump Says Israel Has To ‘Finish The Problem’ In Gaza After Months Of Silence</a> The GOP front-runner repeatedly told "Fox & Friends" that the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas and Israel's retaliation would not have happened had he been president. Sanjana Karanth, HuffPost, Mar 5, 2024</p>
<h2>Journalists' language</h2>
<p><a href="https://wapo.st/497Plv6" target="_blank">The media navigates a war of words for reporting on Gaza and Israel</a> (my subscriber gift link) News outlets, and readers, debate terms such as ‘terrorists’ vs. ‘militants,’ ‘invasion’ vs. ‘incursion’. Paul Farhi. <i>Washington Post</i>. October 20, 2023.</p>
<h2>Some of us don't know very much</h2>
<p>None of us has all the facts. Most of us haven't developed a relevant standpoint from which to examine some of the facts.</p>
<blockquote><p>"I know about the Palestine-Israel conflict the way I know about every other news story, through my social media feeds. ...most of the people whose opinions I trust believe that Palestine has a right to sovereignty and that Israel is an occupying force and that the actions taken against Gaza are genocidal. ... I don’t think I’m going to come up with a social-media zinger or a quick-hit blog post that successfully resolves generations of conflict. ... The actual, serious coverage should be done by experts. I’m just witnessing the war the same way everyone is, because it’s happening on the planet, and I live here." — Jude Ellison Doyle, <a href="https://judedoyle.medium.com/reading-poetry-through-the-war-6fc1753774fd" target="_blank">Reading Poetry Through the War</a>, October 27, 2023 (on Medium, paywalled)</p></blockquote>
<h2>Some of us know a lot</h2>
<p>However, some of us have already done lots of work.</p>
<blockquote><p>"Earlier this year, we received an invitation from the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin to deliver a lecture about Yugoslavia and participate in a debate on the relevance of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) today as part of a programme called Lost – You Go Slavia.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>The NAM emerged as a response to the bipolarisation of the world during the Cold War and included countries that refused to side with either of the world’s two main power blocs at the time. The movement united countries and struggles against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, occupation and foreign aggression of all kinds. Its founding principles included the doctrines of peaceful co-existence and self-determination.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Regrettably, the Gorki Theatre has also decided to take action to silence Palestinian voices in response to the Israel-Palestine war. It said it would 'postpone' a performance of the Yael Ronen play The Situation that was scheduled for October 23. In its published statement on how it reached this decision, the theatre admitted its powerlessness in the face of the current 'situation' but added that 'the attack by the terrorist organisation Hamas on Israel puts us on Israel’s side'. The theatre stated that 'war is a great simplifier' that 'demands a simple division into friend and foe' and concluded that 'our arguments with the old wars do not help us with this new one'.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>Our withdrawal from the event at the Gorki Theatre is not in any way aimed at withdrawing ourselves from this important and urgent conversation. Instead, it is an effort to point the mirror back at German institutions and communicate to them the shortsightedness of their position on the current situation in Israel-Palestine.</p>
<p>* * *</p>
<p>When it comes to Israel-Palestine, Germany and, indeed, the rest of the West appear to be suffering from what the Germans themselves aptly brand as 'Denkverbot', which means the prohibition to think."<br> — "<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/11/1/against-the-denkverbot-if-you-cancel-palestine-cancel-us" target="_blank">Against the ‘Denkverbot’: If you cancel Palestine, cancel us</a>," Srecko Horvat, Paul Stubbs, and Dubravka Sekulić, Al Jazeera, November 1, 2023</p></blockquote>
<p>Pankaj Mishra writes: "Solidarity with the Jewish state has burnished Germany’s proud self-image as the only country that makes public remembrance of its criminal past the foundation of its collective identity. ... West Germany moved fast after 1960, becoming the most important supplier of military hardware to Israel in addition to being the main enabler of its economic modernisation. ... Such was the ‘unprincipled political gamesmanship’, as Primo Levi called it, that expedited the rehabilitation of Germany only a few years after the full extent of its genocidal antisemitism became known. A strategic philosemitism, parasitic on old antisemitic stereotypes but now combined with sentimental images of Jews, flourished in postwar Germany." And then, German antisemitism gets projected onto Muslims:</p>
<blockquote><p>"what Marwecki describes as the ‘exchange structure specific to German-Israeli relations’: moral absolution of an insufficiently de-Nazified and still profoundly antisemitic Germany in return for cash and weapons. It also suited both countries to portray Arab adversaries of Israel, including Nasser (‘Hitler on the Nile’), as the true embodiments of Nazism. The Eichmann trial underplayed the persistence of Nazi support in Germany while exaggerating the Nazi presence in Arab countries, to the exasperation of at least one observer: Hannah Arendt wrote that Globke ‘had more right than the ex-Mufti of Jerusalem to figure in the history of what the Jews had actually suffered from the Nazis’. She noted, too, that Ben-Gurion, while exonerating Germans as ‘decent’, made no ‘mention of decent Arabs."</p></blockquote>
<p> — <a href="https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v46/n01/pankaj-mishra/memory-failure" target="_blank">Memory Failure</a>
Pankaj Mishra, London Review of Books, Vol. 46 No. 1 · 4 January 2024</p>
<h2>Multiple things can be true</h2>
<p>Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg describes <a href="https://lifeisasacredtext.substack.com/p/hand-in-hand" target="_blank">her children's preschool and first-grade classes in Jerusalem</a> in 2015-2016, which were bilingual Hebrew–Arabic. "Each class has an equal number of Jewish and Palestinian kids, and even the principal’s job is held by two people, who divide responsibilities by grade level." The kids were kids together, learned "easy and sweet" holiday celebrations, but also talked about "the hard stuff" about national identity. Here's how it's done: "They didn't hide from the fact of multiple realities. They simply named it. Honored it. Allowed true things to be true."</p>
<h2>Why some people change their opinion</h2>
<p>People may abandon political a worldview for material reasons: rich people, when they no longer directly profit from it, and poor people, when they no longer see it as a source of security. Do you have a decent job, an affordable home, the promise of healthcare? If yes, your political myth serves you: you see it as the source of your prosperity (or just your comfort, or at least your survival) as well as the moral justification for you having that material standard of living. But if you aren't getting those benefits, you start to see the political myth as a lie.</p>
<blockquote><p>"Since Oct. 7, at least 64 journalists and media workers have been killed in Israel and Occupied Palestine, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), making it the deadliest two months for journalists since the nonprofit began collecting data in 1992.</p>
<p>The number of journalists killed in the past two months in the war in Gaza has surpassed the amount killed in the Vietnam War, which lasted two decades, according to the <a href="https://www.ifj.org/war-in-gaza" target="_blank">International Federation of Journalists</a> (IFJ). As of December 14, their count of journalists killed is up to 71."</p>
<p> — "<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/journalists-vigil-killed-gaza-israel/" target="_blank">Chicago journalists hold vigil for colleagues killed in Gaza and Israel</a>," Mikayla Price, CBS Chicago, December 14, 2023</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"What we know for sure though is that the destruction of Gaza is nearly total. The vast majority of its 2.2 million residents displaced. Half are at risk of starvation. Nearly all hospitals destroyed.... (4:23–36) A fifth of Gaza's buildings are estimated to have been destroyed. (4:50–53) ...if you spend any time at all reading the Israeli press, listening to what Israeli leaders and commentators are actually saying, it is very clear that for a lot of people in government, the mass destruction of Gaza — razing it like Putin razed Grozny, or Assad razed Aleppo – is the point, the goal. Many prominent members of the Israeli governing class don’t think there is such a thing as an innocent civilian in Gaza, have said that everyone in Gaza deserves their fate.” (6:41–7:10) ... Now, I’ll be the first to confess, the first to confess: I have no idea what to do about Hamas or about what comes next. But the Amalek method [that is, destroying everyone and everything indiscriminately without mercy] cannot be the solution.” (8:28–40) ... [The war’s] animating moral logic looks to most of the world, and, frankly, to me, to be that every single last person in Gaza is guilty and deserves their lot. And that is the moral logic of Hamas. It is the moral logic that drove the atrocity of October 7. And an atrocity like October 7 does not, cannot justify whatever comes after it, whatever the response. There is no terrorist attack, no matter how horrific — and truly Oct 7 was horrific — that can wash clean what we are seeing in Gaza and what we as Americans and our government are abetting. It must end. We must stop it. (9:07–end)" — <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/chris-hayes-the-war-in-gaza-must-end-200600133580" target="_blank">Chris Hayes: The war in Gaza must end</a>, MSNBC, December 19, 2023</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/09/middleeast/gaza-orphan-british-doctor-jordan-king-intl-hnk/index.html" target="_blank">British surgeon says Gaza ‘beyond worst thing’ he’s seen, as Jordan’s king warns Israel creating a ‘generation of orphans’</a>, Martin Goillandeau, Isa Soares, Catherine Nicholls, Caroline Faraj and Kathleen Magramo, CNN, January 9, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-10-24/h_ba0b5fbd89bcd27ad3a3f10f09f8f18e" target="_blank">Hamas no longer controlling large parts of Gaza, Israel says</a>, Lauren Izso, CNN, January 10, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/war-gaza-how-critics-are-twisting-frantz-fanons-legacy" target="_blank">War on Gaza: How critics are twisting Frantz Fanon's legacy</a>: No amount of verbal gymnastics can escape the simple truth that indigenous resistance is crucial to ending colonial atrocities. Hamid Dabashi, Middle East Eye, 5 March 2024</p>
<h2>Some Jews oppose Israeli military action</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-hamas-gaza-american-jews-protest-demonstrate-military-action_n_6542a229e4b06bc01e22c46c" target="_blank">In Grief And Under Pressure, A Growing Number Of American Jews Protest Israeli Military Action</a><br>As the death toll rises in Gaza, many American Jews are speaking out — often in conflict with friends and family. Matt Shuham, HuffPost, Nov 2, 2023</p>
<blockquote><p>"'As the battle lines between the Palestine solidarity movement and the organized Jewish community become more starkly demarcated, there’s going to be a lot more scrutiny,' said [UCLA professor David] Myers. 'It’s going to take time to sort out what [Jewish organizations’] policies look like. In all likelihood they’re not going to be more open-ended—they’re going to be more closed.' Marjorie N. Feld, a historian at Babson College who has studied the history of American Jewish criticism of Zionism, said that such policies could result in a 'self-imposed' marginalization of American Jewish organizations. 'It's really a loss for us when we can’t join in coalitions,” she said, saying moves like this “put American Jews in isolation.'"
— "<a href="https://jewishcurrents.org/crisis-at-the-92nd-street-y?token=HLTLifnvlknC1VVU0CPdknV0bz-7DDSg" target="_blank">Crisis at the 92nd Street Y</a>," Mari Cohen, Jewish Currents, November 8, 2023</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/rabbis-cease-fire-protest-united-nations-biden-veto_n_659c7cace4b0bfe5ff647229" target="_blank">Rabbis Stage Protest, Call For Cease-Fire Inside United Nations</a> The protesting rabbis appealed to the global community to stop Israeli military operations in Gaza, despite the United States’ ongoing support for Israel’s invasion. Matt Shuham, HuffPost, Jan 9, 2024</p>
<h2>What we need to do</h2>
<p>If you're a <a href="https://medium.com/membership" target="_blank">paying Medium member</a>, I recommend this paywalled article, "<a href="https://medium.com/age-of-awareness/the-difficulty-of-talking-with-students-about-gaza-58a8a3b4476d" target="_blank">The difficulty of talking with students about Gaza</a>," Matt T., Medium, November 10, 2023 (12-min read)</p>
<p>"It will take more. It will take much more. It’ll take unlearning deeply embedded ideas and learning new ones. It’ll take much less individualism, and much more understanding of how we inherently rely upon one another, and how we should rely on one another even more. It’ll take unlearning the idea that you or I are the main character in the story of humanity, and learning that mass movements, mass shifts of millions and billions of people are the main characters. It’ll take militant organizing on a massive scale, with the aim of transforming society. It’ll take radical thinking and unprecedented creativity, but I believe that we can do all of this and then some. Even more so I believe we must, and therefore I choose to believe that we will."<br> — Joshua P. Hill, "<a href="https://www.jphilll.com/p/when-hope-is-hard" target="_blank">When Hope is Hard</a>," New Means (Substack), Oct 26, 2023</p>
<p>"It is easy to denounce every antisemitic attack that has come in the wake of Israel’s relentless and genocidal attack on Gaza. I condemn them all. I want my family and friends to be safe – I want to be safe. And so I also condemn the decades-long Zionist effort to claim my entire religion and claim my entire people. Judaism is a religion, a culture, and in many ways an ethnicity. Zionism is a political and colonial project. In equating them, the state of Israel and Zionist propagandists tie my people to their violence.<br>
* * *<br>
Jews everywhere must be clear that we are not Zionists, and we refuse to have our identity tied to the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians. We must cut off support and force our governments to do the same. Never Again means Never Again for anyone. And Never Again is now."<br>
— Joshua P. Hill, "<a href="https://www.jphilll.com/p/equating-zionism-and-judaism-hurts" target="_blank">Equating Zionism and Judaism hurts the Jewish people</a>," New Means (Substack), Oct 26, 2023</p>
<h2>This happened</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/harvard-law-review-gaza-israel-genocide/" target="_blank">The Harvard Law Review Refused to Run This Piece About Genocide in Gaza</a>
The piece was nearing publication when the journal decided against publishing it. You can read the article here. Rabea Eghbariah. The Nation. November 21, 2023.</p>
<p><a href="https://theintercept.com/2023/11/21/harvard-law-review-gaza-israel/" target="_blank">Harvard Law Review Editors Vote to Kill Article About Genocide in Gaza</a>. The article on the Gaza war and the Nakba was commissioned, edited, fact checked, and prepared for publication — but was then blocked amid a climate of fear., Natasha Lennard, The Intercept, November 21, 2023.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/un-security-council-us-block-accountability-international-gaza_n_6583338ce4b04da984257b9c" target="_blank">Amid U.N. Security Council Intrigue, U.S. Privately Moves To Block Another Option For International Accountability For Gaza</a> The Biden administration is finalizing plans to urge Switzerland to reject a request from Palestine and its supporters to hold a conference on violations of the Geneva Conventions. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, HuffPost, Dec 20, 2023</p>
<p>"...Gaza, where over 500,000 people are now starving. Of the human beings on Earth experiencing the most acute level of starvation, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/gaza-is-starving" target="_blank">80% are Palestinians in Gaza right now</a>. It may take a minute to wrap your mind around that. Approximately 700,000 people on the planet at this moment are experiencing phase 5 hunger, or catastrophic starvation. 4 out of 5 of them are in Gaza. In other words Israel is starving Gaza to death."<br>
— "<a href="https://www.jphilll.com/p/dont-let-bad-actors-set-the-terms" target="_blank">Don't let Bad Actors set the Terms</a>." Joshua P. Hill. New Means. January 4, 2024.</p>
<blockquote><p>"The International Court of Justice has begun its hearing in the proceedings brought by South Africa accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.</p>
<p>The judges representing Israel and South Africa have been sworn in.</p>
<p>Aharon Bharak, an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor and retired Supreme Court Justice, is representing Israel.</p>
<p>Dikgang Moseneke, a former deputy chief justice, is representing South Africa."</p>
<p> — <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-01-11-24/h_b076b6b4318e9621443f7715b94316fc" target="_blank">Happening now: The International Court of Justice hearing has begun</a>, CNN, January 11, 2024</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="https://wapo.st/421UTnK" target="_blank">What qualifies as genocide? Breaking down the ICJ case against Israel.</a> (subscriber gift link) Claire Parker, Annabelle Timsit and Adam Taylor, Washington Post, January 11, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://foreverwars.ghost.io/south-africas-genocide-case-against-israel-is-serious/" target="_blank">South Africa's Genocide Case Against Israel Is Serious</a>. Israel denounces it. The U.S. dismisses it. The International Court of Justice is hearing it. The rest of us can't flinch from reading it. Spencer Ackerman. Forever Wars. Jan 11, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-rhetoric-palestinians-south-africa-genocide-case_n_65a94997e4b041f1ce65175e" target="_blank">Israel's Dehumanizing Rhetoric Of Palestinians Becomes Central To Genocide Case</a>: South Africa says the language used by political leaders, soldiers and entertainers is proof of Israel's intent to commit genocide against Palestinians. Tia Goldenberg, AP, HuffPost, Jan 18, 2024</p>
<p>"More than half of the estimated 2.2 million people in Gaza are seeking refugee in the Rafah area, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)."<br>
"<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-02-06-24/h_39ece1cd84adf75f86ad6a55fa70cc75" target="_blank">Tent city holding more than 1 million Palestinians is rapidly expanding, satellite images show</a>." Paul P. Murphy and Gianluca Mezzofiore. CNN. February 5, 2024.</p>
<p>"More than 1.3 million people are believed to be in Rafah, the majority displaced from other parts of Gaza, according to the United Nations...Rafah is the last major population center in Gaza not occupied by the IDF."<br>
— "<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-02-09-24/h_a2a8d5dcdbf2e6c4d461652590457519" target="_blank">Netanyahu directs military to draw up plan for "evacuation of the population" from Rafah</a>: Amir Tal in Jerusalem, Mick Krever in London. CNN, Feb 9, 2024.</p>
<p>"<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/09/head-of-unwra-says-he-followed-reverse-due-process-in-sacking-accused-gaza-staff" target="_blank">UNRWA staff accused by Israel sacked without evidence, chief admits</a>": Philippe Lazzarini says summary dismissal of nine employees was ‘reverse due process’ after Israel’s claims they aided Hamas attack, Emine Sinmaz, 9 Feb 2024</p>
<p>"<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/israel-hamas-war-health-care-facilities-attack-study/" target="_blank">Satellite Images Point to Indiscriminate Israeli Attacks on Gaza’s Health Care Facilities</a>": New research finds that Israel’s attacks on Gaza damaged hospitals and other medical facilities at the same rate as other buildings, potentially in violation of international law. Vittoria Elliott, Wired, Feb 12, 2024</p>
<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/israel-storms-khan-younis-hospital_n_65cdeb9be4b0087d43c93f14" target="_blank">Israeli Forces Storm Main Hospital In Southern Gaza After Partial Evacuation</a>: Israeli forces have stormed the main hospital in southern Gaza in what the army says is a limited operation seeking the remains of hostages taken by Hamas. Wafaa Shurafa and Basem Mroue, AP, Feb 15, 2024</p>
<p>Due to the power loss at Nasser hospital, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-02-16-24/h_3e0a84a3c748f14644074aca6615eda0" target="_blank">five patients died</a>, as reported on Feb 16.</p>
<h2>Resources</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/news/solidarity-with-palestine-free-resources-and-further-reading" target="_blank">Solidarity with Palestine: Free Resources and Further Reading</a><br>
Free ebooks including Ilan Pappe's Ten Myths About Israel and Gideon Levy's The Punishment of Gaza.<br>
Verso Books reading list, 24 October 2023</p>
<p>Strange Horizons' 2021 <a href="http://strangehorizons.com/issue/29-march-2021/" target="_blank">Palestinian speculative fiction issue</a>, free online</p>
<p>And "a work in progress to create a list of all available Palestinian speculative fiction": <a href="https://soniasulaiman.com/readpalestinianspecfic-reading-list/" target="_blank">#ReadPalestinianSpecFic Reading List</a> by Sonia Sulaiman</p>
<p>Putri Prihatini (@BlogTolkien on X), author of Blog Tolkien Indonesia, recommends these books. I don't want to link to X so here are the titles:<br>
My First and Only Love (2021) by Shahar Khalifeh<br>
Salt Houses (2017) by Hala Alyan<br>
Minor Detail (2017) by Adania Shibli<br>
The Parisian (2019) by Isabella Hammad<br>
"The stories of Ghassan Kanafani, who was assassinated in 1972, were among the must-read from Palestinian literature. These two books have his notable stories and novellas, including Men in the Sun (1962) and Returning to Haifa (1970), in convenient collections."<br>
Haifa Fragments (2015) by Khulud Khamis<br>
The Blue between Sky and Water (2015) by Susan Abulhawa<br>
Velvet (1993) by Huzama Habayeb<br>
Enter Ghost (2023) by Isabella Hammad<br>
Gate of the Sun (2005) by Elias Khoury<br>
The Sea Cloak (2019) by Nayrouz Qarmout<br>
Out of Time (2022) by Samira Azzam<br>
Wild Thorns (1976) by Sahar Khalifeh<br>
Hunters in a Narrow Street (1960) by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra<br>
Against the Loveless World (2019) by Susan Abulhawa<br>
Her First Palestinian (2022) by Saeed Teebi<br>
Wondrous Journeys in Strange Lands (2020) by Sonia Nimr<br>
Speak, Bird, Speak Again (1989) by Ibrahim Muhawi<br>
Jokes for the Gunmen (2019) by Mazen Maarouf<br></p>
<h2>This should not be happening</h2>
<p>There are a lot of anti-Arab racist articles. Newspapers should not be publishing this.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDKuNd_cBgQUScrDmrqdsGUKZW-A_aIedOoOPPwKOTSRP7AMpo35WhljpXCWlWOMumEg7oouEb4-1XPUm56nlYWpD61C1yhb-V9Vt8IDKB3T-5j6wXYc9sgiRl9kJ3xnvWO9vTC74s4V4TLkiEtwhmQa-1spwBvyi8_ZwhMv8WQ6nmctJeISv-CgZfxjc/s1600/no.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="WSJ headline on Feb 2, 2024: Welcome to Dearborn, Michigan, America's Jihad Capital - Imams and politicians in the Michigan city side with Hamas against Israel and Iran against the US" border="0" width="80%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDKuNd_cBgQUScrDmrqdsGUKZW-A_aIedOoOPPwKOTSRP7AMpo35WhljpXCWlWOMumEg7oouEb4-1XPUm56nlYWpD61C1yhb-V9Vt8IDKB3T-5j6wXYc9sgiRl9kJ3xnvWO9vTC74s4V4TLkiEtwhmQa-1spwBvyi8_ZwhMv8WQ6nmctJeISv-CgZfxjc/s1600/no.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>Nor this.</p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYLoIDn_Pyf9Mc0UnWRSDY5-mcwoYz8X-g958sj8O0vWOUUTdYi9bBFSTNv2sGgNDG-jQT1FadFVPoow4aQ8A52D37xREI2Q7-pZ0ak3MpxlBcmew7r7S1HF3JEn4oCOE6dK8QH1Sn_QI-vpYeRJgZiOrRcUgPGtG2icw7PrHd3lc72IiyZpwgsMevw4M/s1600/friedman1.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Thomas L. Friedman: Understanding the Middle East through the Animal Kingdom, Feb 2, 2024 NYT opinion" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjYLoIDn_Pyf9Mc0UnWRSDY5-mcwoYz8X-g958sj8O0vWOUUTdYi9bBFSTNv2sGgNDG-jQT1FadFVPoow4aQ8A52D37xREI2Q7-pZ0ak3MpxlBcmew7r7S1HF3JEn4oCOE6dK8QH1Sn_QI-vpYeRJgZiOrRcUgPGtG2icw7PrHd3lc72IiyZpwgsMevw4M/s1600/friedman1.jpeg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-_AC90Xf5WXwUM8mYOfmSLQi8PT65UFu_BPbEL_lSSKYzKBd-m-nU8KyyxY5cz-r4e4N6XEhRE8dHwLDsaPzq2gErgM0IS1T5DKmdlHO3yssmyQkXWjCDJTWFwC9iyLumsoP1_lHoPQWiQkQdlW6Rm2b1tImcaDhxIl_Hfvvg2prgmOepMHooemlrjg/s1600/friedman2.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="The U.S. is like an old lion. We are still the king of the Middle East jungle — more powerful than any single actor, but we have so many scars from so many fights that we just can’t just show up, roar loudly and expect that everyone will do what we want or scamper away. We are one tired lion, and that’s why other predators are no longer afraid to test us. Iran is to geopolitics what a recently discovered species of parasitoid wasp is to nature. What does this parasitoid wasp do? According to Science Daily, the wasp 'injects its eggs into live caterpillars, and the baby wasp larvae slowly eat the caterpillar from the inside out, bursting out once they have eaten their fill.'" border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhZ-_AC90Xf5WXwUM8mYOfmSLQi8PT65UFu_BPbEL_lSSKYzKBd-m-nU8KyyxY5cz-r4e4N6XEhRE8dHwLDsaPzq2gErgM0IS1T5DKmdlHO3yssmyQkXWjCDJTWFwC9iyLumsoP1_lHoPQWiQkQdlW6Rm2b1tImcaDhxIl_Hfvvg2prgmOepMHooemlrjg/s1600/friedman2.jpeg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjETJgj-73YLlYyjNQftYtjzFQCLZFcDkuQsFESS8hj8MWsxJ3ObwUn0V7Wpiu96QathAGH9_MZxdoimGs-gNHfygKUAGONEyBKLb8xrVMkmHSz8-XiK-sEM4FXmPMjxIUbAf3J5LSWcDEKYgYe4cXOTFUtiJN3KOM-e3je6K6FCBbYRn2ha8-ADJJ3evY/s1600/friedman3.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Is there a better description of Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq today? They are the caterpillars. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is the wasp. The Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and Kataib Hezbollah are the eggs that hatch inside the host — Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Iraq — and eat it from the inside out. We have no counterstrategy that safely and efficiently kills the wasp without setting fire to the whole jungle." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjETJgj-73YLlYyjNQftYtjzFQCLZFcDkuQsFESS8hj8MWsxJ3ObwUn0V7Wpiu96QathAGH9_MZxdoimGs-gNHfygKUAGONEyBKLb8xrVMkmHSz8-XiK-sEM4FXmPMjxIUbAf3J5LSWcDEKYgYe4cXOTFUtiJN3KOM-e3je6K6FCBbYRn2ha8-ADJJ3evY/s1600/friedman3.jpeg"/></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlTcSkeo-Fi0D_P5Z6M-8AYcakkhCH0tiMo0vdzQZwpM65-gZyAgQ1T57j5PbYGaZdpOs2YOAax6Y5tK4DIqZ6MRlE-6iMQUJr7D1z_rMG4z39PD6WoHE5lJHVmJUccn2gGVLrp-8ElIkkBe4DE37MZAAOLlsifYd9Hfk6r5EN0Q2A96j1iXr-QpZMYM/s1600/friedman4.jpeg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="Hamas is like the trap-door spider. The way trap-door spiders operate, according to a nature site, is that 'the spider leaps out at great speed, seizes its prey and hauls it back into the burrow to be devoured, all in a fraction of a second.' Trap-door spiders are adept at camouflaging the doors of their underground nests, so they are hard to see until they’re opened. Finally, Netanyahu is like the sifaka lemur, which I got to observe in Madagascar. Sifakas are primates that use bipedal sideways hopping as a primary means of walking. They advance by moving sideways, waving their arms up and down, which makes them appear to be moving even more than they are. That’s Bibi, always shifting side to side to stay in power and avoiding going decisively backward or forward. This week he may have to." border="0" width="95%" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwlTcSkeo-Fi0D_P5Z6M-8AYcakkhCH0tiMo0vdzQZwpM65-gZyAgQ1T57j5PbYGaZdpOs2YOAax6Y5tK4DIqZ6MRlE-6iMQUJr7D1z_rMG4z39PD6WoHE5lJHVmJUccn2gGVLrp-8ElIkkBe4DE37MZAAOLlsifYd9Hfk6r5EN0Q2A96j1iXr-QpZMYM/s1600/friedman4.jpeg"/></a></div>
<p>"If you read carefully, you'll note that Hamas is both insect eggs *and* a spider. He's capturing the nuance there." —
Osita Nwanevu, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/ositanwanevu.bsky.social/post/3kkjtw6777c2r" target="_blank">Bsky</a></p>
<p>"I'm not sure it's possible to truly loathe Friedman with the proper intensity unless you've grown up with him as the Pulitzer-winning foreign correspondent, held up as the institutional voice of reason, and then for a year he writes increasingly deranged columns about an alternate-universe Iraq." He wrote an "unending series of columns saying if only we'd gone into Iraq for better reasons and the right way things would be great now, <a href="https://fair.org/extra/tom-friedman8217s-flexible-deadlines/" target="_blank">maybe by six months</a> we'll have somehow jumped to that reality." — Warren Terra, <a href="https://bsky.app/profile/warrenterra.bsky.social/post/3kklwt6hdzt2e" target="_blank">Bsky</a></p>
<p>Islamophobia "kills," "has been normalized," and "conservatives and liberals both engage in it." On that last point:</p>
<blockquote><p>"...each of their dehumanizations feeds on the other. The liberal says there are monsters abroad and the Lion, as king of the jungle, must hunt them. The conservative, nodding, adds that the monsters have already made it into the Lion's den, and so the Lion must hunt them down as well. Perhaps, even, the Lion should prioritize those monsters closer at hand.</p>
<p>I've written an <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781984879790" target="_blank">entire literal book</a> about the symbiotic and iterative nature of these two propositions."</p>
<p> — Spencer Ackerman, <a href="https://foreverwars.ghost.io/conservative-and-liberal-islamophobias-and-what-they-say-about-the-persistence-of-the-war-on-terror-plus-biden-invokes-the-2001-aumf-against-irans-coalition/" target="_blank">Two Varieties of Media Dehumanization</a>, February 5, 2024</p></blockquote>
<script
src="https://bookshop.org/widgets.js"
data-type="book"
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data-sku="9781984879790"></script>
<p><a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2024/3/25/why-archaeologists-must-speak-up-for-gaza" target="_blank">Why archaeologists must speak up for Gaza</a>: Archaeology is often a mechanism of power. As such, its scholars have an obligation to speak up against oppression. Hilary Morgan Leathem, 25 Mar 2024</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-70527680834013780832023-10-09T20:33:00.006-04:002023-10-09T20:33:43.645-04:00Everything is futile, resist the machines<p>In early industrialization, workers' sabotage of machines was treated as a serious crime.</p>
<blockquote><p>"On March 5, [1812,] two days after Childe Harold was published, the Frame Work Bill passed both hosues of Parliament.<br>
Anyone convicted of dismantling a machine could now be put to death."<br>
— Brian Merchant. <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780316487740" target="_blank">Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech</a>. Little Brown and Company, 2023.</p></blockquote>
<p>It maks me think that, if you were to ask a political scientist today: <i>Terrorism is ideologically motivated violence against what or whom?</i> they'd likely answer: <i>Civilians.</i> But 200 years ago, there was a different prevailing view: Terrorism was workers' intentional destruction of a rich man's property.</p>
<p>The Luddites weren’t necessarily protesting machines, Merchant explains, but “the <I>social costs</I> of technological ‘progress’” forced upon them, according to Ruha Benjamin in <I>Race after Technology</I>. Imani Perry says that they were resisting “the conversion of oneself into a machine,” especially for the purpose of making someone else rich.</p>
<blockquote><p>“It is deemed only rational to surrender and rejoice in new conveniences and harmonies, to wrap ourselves in the first text and embrace a violent ignorance of its shadow.”<<br>
— Shoshana Zuboff. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781541758001" target="_blank">The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.</a></i> Public Affairs, 2020.</p></blockquote>
<blockquote><p>"The thin line between flourishing and failure is also a theme of the [Sukkot] holiday’s scripture. In synagogue, Jews traditionally read the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, a ponderous and often pessimistic tract that opens with the famous words: 'Futility of futilities, everything is futile.' But the original Hebrew holds a secret that is not readily apparent in translation. The Hebrew word for 'futility' is <i>havel</i> or הבל. The word for 'everything' is <i>hakol</i> or הכל. As you can see from the lettering, the difference between the two words is a single stroke of the scribe’s pen. That’s all it takes to turn 'everything' into nothing, utility into futility. Observing this point, the Oxford scholar John Jarick wrote, 'we might say that [Ecclesiastes] has crafted the most compact form of parallelism to be found in the Hebrew Bible.' It is as though the biblical author wanted to illustrate how the slightest shift in a life story can completely change its contents."<br>
— Yair Rosenberg. <a href="https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/651c6e56acb9ac00375a138a/sukkot-meaning-teachers/" target="_blank">When You’re Not in Control of Your Life</a> This week’s Jewish holiday reminds us that the line between our success and failure is thinner and more fragile than we like to think. <i>The Atlantic</i>, Oct 4, 2023.</p></blockquote>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRQGGdztuAqQyFFoakPUNgXT625H_lEiUcf1Gu1SXq5nFsdqXGYYNCkDCyH8ncdAWl2bhNhJ5ykaVnv9MVdVGG3pLXaXRBRJT8kFduaAJvr_2PoHNacSK1DHNdZUqlqvmN1lFKOEfHkFmwHbHx90PedmFJ8Q8NZRbbzvZ8Z2FMo1m5CmAn0-S2WX86_Q8/s1600/god-foot.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="God's foot stomping countryside" border="0" data-original-height="1086" data-original-width="1920" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhRQGGdztuAqQyFFoakPUNgXT625H_lEiUcf1Gu1SXq5nFsdqXGYYNCkDCyH8ncdAWl2bhNhJ5ykaVnv9MVdVGG3pLXaXRBRJT8kFduaAJvr_2PoHNacSK1DHNdZUqlqvmN1lFKOEfHkFmwHbHx90PedmFJ8Q8NZRbbzvZ8Z2FMo1m5CmAn0-S2WX86_Q8/s1600/god-foot.jpg"/></a></div>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-77965639963620221932023-10-08T13:36:00.004-04:002023-10-11T10:16:19.163-04:00The cotton gin: 'The most disastrous case of unintended consequences'<p>"The African slave trade is the most dramatic chapter in the story of human existence."<br>
— Deborah G. Plant, introduction to Zora Neale Hurston. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780062748218" target="_blank">Barracoon</a></i>. Amistad, 2018.</p>
<p>"[In 1793, Eli] Whitney's machine separated those [sticky green] seeds from the white cotton balls with a hand crank or a horse pull. ... Whitney even suggested that his device could help end slavery, since laborers would no longer have to do the unpleasant work of picking the seeds out by hand.<br>
That is not what happened. Instead, the cotton gin is one of the original sins of automated technology, and the most disastrous case of unintended consequences unleashed upon the world this side of the nuclear bomb. Whitney's machine was widely pirated, modded, and adopted by plantation owners, who saw little need to compensate the inventor. The cotton gin worked so well that it wildly increased the demand for workers to do every other part of the cotton production process, especially the hoeing and the picking. ...it helped sustain the institution of slavery for another seventy years."<br>
— Brian Merchant. <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780316487740" target="_blank">Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech</a>. Little Brown and Company, 2023.</p>
<p>(Later in the book, Merchant says that so-called "automation," when used as a pretext to "hide and degrade" human labor, is — as Astra Taylor calls it — "fauxtomation.")</p>
<p>"...the United States does not have a legitimate history of integrity and fairness. It’s been run by villains that make Disney’s look like saints. Racism is not a byproduct as much as it’s the foundational stock in the American soup. This is why Black people are still fighting to be recognized in our full humanity."<br>
— Luvvie Ajayi. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781627796064" target="_blank">I'm Judging You: The Do-Better Manual</a></i>. New York: Henry Holt, 2016. p. 72.</p>
<p>“..a majority of white voters backed a candidate who assured them that they will never have to share this country with people of color as equals. That is the reality that all Americans will have to deal with and one that most of the country has yet to confront.”<br>
— Adam Serwer. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780593230824" target="_blank">The Cruelty is the Point: The Past, Present, and Future of Trump’s America</a></i>. New York: One World, 2021. Chapter: “The Nationalist’s Delusion.”</p>
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<p>If you'd like to learn more about this period in history (the early 1800s) elsewhere, I wrote about <a target="_blank" href="https://medium.com/@tuckerlieberman/self-philosophy-ich-7ea3626553fa">the Jena collective in Germany during the end of Immanuel Kant's life</a>. It's paywalled. Readers with a <a href="https://tuckerlieberman.medium.com/membership" target="_blank">paid membership to Medium</a> can read it.</p>
Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-57093713206299139442023-10-07T18:33:00.003-04:002023-10-07T18:33:55.732-04:00Quotes: Reflections on machines
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<h2>1920s and 1930s</h2>
<p>"Now we cannot abolish machinery, because machinery lies in the very essence of life and we ourselves are machines. But, as the largest part of history shows, there is no need whatever for man to become the slave of machinery, or even for machinery to injure the quality of his own work; rightly used it may improve it. The greatest task before civilisation at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men; and if civilisation fails at the task, then without doubt it and its makers will go down to a common destruction."<br>
— Havelock Ellis. <i>On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue</i>. Two Volumes in One. New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc. 1937. (Formerly <i>Little Essays of Love and Virtue</i>, 1921, and <i>More Essays of Love and Virtue</i>, 1931.) Vol 1., p. 177.
<h2>1960s and 1970s</h2>
<p>"...we should tailor our intelligent opportunist advances to our basic behavioural requirements. We must somehow improve in quality rather than in sheer quantity. If we can do this, we can continue to progress technologically in a dramatic and exciting way without denying our evolutionary inheritance. If we do not, then our suppressed biological urges will build up and up until the dam bursts and the whole of our elaborate existence is swept away in the flood."<br>
— Desmond Morris. <i>The Naked Ape</i>. New York: Dell, 1967. p 197.</p>
<p>"It isn't the machine that dehumanizes, it is the system that tends to enslave man."<br>
— William A. Spurner. <i>Natural Law and the Ethics of Love: A New Synthesis</i>. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1974. p 141.</p>
<h2>1990s</h2>
<p>"[Samuel] Butler conceded that machines were still governed by their makers, but, surveying the marvels of nineteenth-century technology, he wondered if that would always be true: 'We are daily giving them greater power and supplying by all sorts of ingenious contrivances that self-regulating, self-acting power which will be to them what intellect has been to the human race.' ... 'There is nothing which our infatuated race would desire more," he quipped, "than to see a fertile union between two steam engines.'"<br>
— Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan. <i>Microcosmos</i>. California: University of California Press, 1986, 1997. p. 257.</p>
<p>"[In an automated world,] human artists will become the most valued and irreplaceable of professionals."<br>
— "The Creators," Bran Ferren, <i>The New York Times Magazine</i>, September 19, 1999, p 54.</p>
<h2>2000s</h2>
<p>"Between 1840 and 1879 alone, these [innovations] included the electric telegraph, the telephone, the lightbulb, the transcontinental railroad, and the passenger elevator. Tasks that had been taken for granted since the dawn of civilization were suddenly no longer required, or were performed in utterly new ways. Tasks that had always been performed by human flesh were taken over by machines. Motion and light and time and space and talk, and thus reality itself, morphed radically within a single generation..."<br>
— Anneli Rufus. <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781569245132" target="_blank">Party of One: The Loner's Manifesto</a></i>. Da Capo Press, 2003. p. 98.</p>
<h2>2010s</h2>
<p>"John Henry was a steel-driving railroad worker in the South in the 1800s whose story has become legend. … When the steel-driving machine arrived to replace Henry and the other steel-drivers he battled the machine, carrying with him his pride and the honor of humankind. … Henry surely pushed his heart and lungs well past their potential because he won the battle against the steel-driving machine and then he collapsed, dead of a stroke or a heart attack.<br>
In modern psychology John Henryism is the idea that exposure to social discrimination can lead some Blacks to put in extraordinary effort in pursuit of success and a repudiation of racism, resulting in a steep physiological cost. Blacks who have extra human reasons why they need to win — to prove that they have been wrongly judged and the stereotype against Blacks is wrong and that the expectation of failure is undeserved — may find themselves working incredibly hard and straining the edge of their physical, mental, and human capabilities as John Henry did."<br>
— Touré, <i><a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9781439177563" target="_blank">Who's Afraid of Post-Blackness?: What it Means to Be Black Now</a></i>. New York: Free Press, 2011.</p>
<h2>2020s</h2>
<p>"The notion that textile workers like Ben Bamforth and George Mellor would discuss the prospect of losing their agency to machines in the early 1800s, when the machinery in question was a wooden, water-powered loom, may strike us as implausible. Our twenty-first-century visions of displacement by machines, after all, concern omniscient artificial intelligences and sleek autonomous robotics. But George and Ben's argument was colored by deeper anxieties, too — what is the value of human labor, they wondered, or even human life, in a world where technologies seem constantly poised to replace us? In fact, it's remarkably similar to debates we're still having two hundred years later, in books like <i>Rise of the Robots</i>, film franchises like <i>Terminator</i>, and cable news segments about the looming AI takeover."<br>
— Brian Merchant. <a href="https://bookshop.org/a/4480/9780316487740" target="_blank">Blood in the Machine: The Origins of the Rebellion Against Big Tech</a>. Little Brown and Company, 2023.</p>Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-987937946590772058.post-71203533445007387522023-10-05T15:34:00.005-04:002023-10-05T15:37:22.066-04:00Colombia: Noticias del reconocimiento de los falsos positivos
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<h2>Álvaro Uribe</h2>
<p>En su sitio web, el expresidente Álvaro Uribe subió un video. <a href="https://www.alvarouribevelez.com.co/los-falsos-positivos-y-las-falsas-campanas-comentarios-a-la-intervencion-del-presidente-petro/" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">La página web</a> tiene la fecha 22 octubre 2022 aunque el video en YouTube tiene la fecha de 4 octubre 2023.</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/87s7IOsQPzg?si=4TtF1SWVcZI06l35" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<p>(Durante su presidencia, Uribe fue miembro del Primero Colombia, luego del Partido de la U (2010–2013) y ahora del Centro Democrático.)</p>
<h2>El Espectador</h2>
<p>"El acto de reconocimiento de responsabilidad que vimos esta semana, con el presidente de la República, Gustavo Petro, a la cabeza, tiene un enorme poder simbólico y deberá repetirse una vez la Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz (JEP) llegue al final del macrocaso que adelanta sobre los mal llamados falsos positivos. * * * Es la primera vez que el Estado colombiano, en voz de sus representantes, ofrece disculpas públicas de esta manera. Es un cambio histórico, pues antes el negacionismo y el silencio eran la norma. ... El expresidente de la República y quien fuera ministro de Defensa bajo la Seguridad Democrática, Juan Manuel Santos, terminó en aquel entonces su intervención diciendo..."
— <a href="https://www.elespectador.com/opinion/editorial/un-estado-que-reconoce-el-horror-va-camino-de-sanarlo/#lndkk5o2mel5gk11cx" target="_blank">Un Estado que reconoce el horror va camino de sanarlo</a>, El Espectador, 4 octubre 2023</p>
<h2>Blu Radio</h2>
<p>"En los últimos días, el jurista Rodrigo Uprimmy ha escrito algunas columnas de <a href="https://www.bluradio.com/nacion/paz/coronel-r-mejia-pide-anular-acusacion-por-falsos-positivos-y-citar-de-testigos-a-uribe-y-pastrana-rg10" target="_blank">opinión sobre los falsos positivos</a>, a propósito de las audiencias de reconocimiento de un grupo de militares en Yopal, Casanare, pues estas personas aceptaron su responsabilidad en casi 300 casos de ejecuciones extrajudiciales que se registraron en el departamento entre los años 2005 y 2008.<br>
— <a href="https://www.bluradio.com/nacion/paz/comision-de-la-verdad-apoya-idea-de-responsabilidad-politica-de-uribe-en-falsos-positivos-rg10" target="_blank">Comisión de la Verdad apoya idea de responsabilidad política de Uribe en falsos positivos</a>. El padre Francisco De Roux y los excomisionados respaldaron a Rodrigo Uprimny. Por su parte, el expresidente Uribe que hay un sesgo en este tipo de declaraciones, Mateo Piñeros, BluRadio, 3 de Octubre, 2023</p>
<p>La Comisión de la Verdad apoyó lo que ha dicho Uprimmy. Su publicación afirmó "la responsabilidad política y moral del expresidente Álvaro Uribe en los falsos positivos" y que Uribe posiblemente tenga "la responsabilidad del mando, aunque no haya ordenado directamente esos actos criminales". También dijeron que tenía que haber sido política del estado, por ser obviamente "un sistema de disposiciones legales y extralegales, estímulos y exigencias de resultados, acciones y omisiones, surgidas desde el mismo Gobierno e implementadas durante varios al interior de las Fuerzas Militares."</p>
<h2>W Radio</h2>
<p>Se llama "contundente" ese párrafo:</p>
<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/R-Ebu__FfdU?si=e9yydL82I1FNmOfA&start=212" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>Uribe</h2>
<p>Uribe les respondió y defendió su política de seguridad democrática. Dijo: "la política de Seguridad Democrática bastante mejoró al país".</p>
<h2>Petro</h2>
<p>Gustavo Petro (Colombia Humana, anteriormente Movimiento Progresistas)Tucker Liebermanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16686164444086529585noreply@blogger.com0