Oh my, these images are gorgeous! There’s something purely earthly about big bodies. Maybe it’s my culture too where often the elder wise women took on a bodacious presence. But I think of Gaia as chunky and big bosomed, enough to feed all her children. But sexy at the same time too. Folks put too much effort in shaming other peoples’ bodies. Sheesh! Much rather connect on a spiritual and mental level. Who cares what your meat suit looks like!
Aren't they though? Someday you'll tell me the trick of getting them into iMovie, although I don't mind having people need to come here where they can savor them for more than a flash. In fact, it's probably a good limitation that I can't.
And yes! My next Amy & me collaborative project (after Kathleen's SOTU challenge) is the second coming of religious figures as female--a female Buddha, earth-goddess Messiah, fleshy Isis nursing a greedy Horus, troublemaker and vixen, powerful rebellious Mary. Gaia has to be big-bosomed, yes.
"elder wise women took on a bodacious presence" Great phrase!
In truth, I'm sceptical any obese (and forget the BMI stuff) individual is as happy with themselves as they can be. It's a lot of weight to carry about, regardless of how attractive, beautiful one is or how they carry it off.
I know some very large folk, beautiful also (indeed more lovely than my slimer self could ever be)...yet there's a cost, movement/mobility, health - often comes with other conditions incl diabetes, back probs, eating issues, etc).
I think it has become more normalised in the US...when in reality it's not the healthiest way to be.
Huge food portions aren't healthy, yet more commonplace here.
I always say a little prayer when I see extremely large bodies...i assume they're struggling. And if I happen to glance at their food trolley full of crappy food I also consider an eating disorder...more suffering.
I have experience of both bulimia and anorexia when younger...so of course, that kind of skinny is neither healthy - physically or psychologically, obviously.
So much is related to vanity and self worth. How do we best live in the body we have....which necessarily changes.
Incidentally, I also believe many larger women (it's mostly female) don't know they have a thyroid issue. A major root cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's thyroiditis (autoimmune).
Chris A Knobbe wrote a fabulous book - 'The ancestral Diet Revolution: How Vegetable Oils and Processed Foods Destroy our Health - and How to Recover' (Ditch the seed oils)
Thank you, Pauline, and I agree, it's a delicate line. I definitely feel your compassion coming through. Are any of us as happy as we could be, if we lived in a system that supported instead of thwarted us? I think I'm one in a hundred people who has both time and money, and I live in the mecca of fresh food. I commented, half joking, half appalled, that everything I bought at the butcher counter last time was $32/ pound. As you and I know, that's being manipulated up by all the attacks on the food system. But organic, sustainably wild-caught, grass-finished, it all comes at a price.
Aubrey talks about a friend who manages her diabetes with Banquet frozen dinners. It's what doesn't trigger it but fits into the $40/ wk food budget she has. It's easy to see why someone without time, money, access would say 'fuck it' and fill up the trolley with food that works for them. I think we're all making the best choices we think are available to us. Sometimes, that's all the choices there are.
Veronica and her husband went to Denmark and she noticed that the 7-11 had ready made, fresh, affordable healthy food. I live by two catty-corner gas stations near the HS and the lines at lunch are 30 kids long with signs of 'no more than 5 students at a time'.
Obese people know that others are scrutinizing their carts (and I don't mean that for you, I think you're both positive and constructive). Aubrey talks about a woman taking a melon out of her cart and saying, 'That's too much sugar for you.' I wonder sometimes if compassion is a double-edged sword. It comes at an emotional cost, that doesn't do anything for the other person but takes something away from us. I think about this when I find myself feeling angry towards homeless people. Paradoxically, when I don't assume how miserable I'd be in their condition, I can see them neutrally--not eliciting my sympathy or anger.
Thanks for sharing your experience of bulimia and anorexia. That's so hard. My middle daughter was on my 'watch list' for anorexia, her dad still wonders if bulimia created the gerd she suffers with now although I don't think so. And wise of you to see that eating disorders go both ways.
How much of this would change if we, as communities, owned our economies, medical systems and food production? You make great points about hypothyroidism and seed oils. The youngest daughter, who told me about Aubrey's podcast, had a rapid weight gain maybe accelerated by birth control pills. She is a contrarian so advice is tricky. When she started talking about this podcast, I (mostly) stopped worrying. It became something named and owned. Rather than the identification being a 'resignation', it lets there be conversations about not accepting what might have a cause--checking her thyroid and food reactions. Now, that would be a whole lot easier with a functional medical system. But it makes me think that giving people pride and even 'glorifying' obesity is a step in the right direction. It brings it out of the closet. Thanks for your thoughtful response, Pauline.
The story of your brother in law and his undeveloped thyroid was interesting. Reading this I thought, how we can't judge, because we never know... and then instantly realized that thought only came up, because absent something identifiable, I do judge. Must be fear behind it.
I remember going to a party years ago, where I saw a very large and very unattractive woman. I instantly felt bad for her. (Projection!) Yet she wore a very colorful outfit and had dyed her un-manicured hair a bright red. I remember wondering why she would bring attention to herself. (Embarrassing now to reflect on.) We ended up having a great conversation - she was funny and bright and so comfortable in her own skin. Suffice to say by the end of the evening, I realized she knew things I didn't know, and had a sense of self that was neither obstructed by, nor rested on, physical appearance. I couldn't say the same.
She totally leaned into who she was physically and presented so positively - and with such intelligence, uniqueness and charm that you soon saw how attractive she actually was. It was a good lesson.
RE:"Yet she doesn’t extrapolate this to other pharmaceutical products when she encourages those who are fat to get the vaccine early without guilt, and says those juicing wheatgrass are ‘almost like anti-vaxxers but not quite.’
So disappointing. Not just the lack of extrapolation (though understandable given she encouraged others to take it) but the labeling of 'anti-vaxxers'. Aubrey would know the dehumanizing and reductive effects of labels... Ah, well.
And while I never had daughters I had friends with round daughters, who went through similar worries and often felt the need to address their daughter's weight, as if it was their failing.
We're always doing our best in a very distorted world.
Your story brought tears to my eyes, Kathleen. You are relentlessly honest about yourself and describe the transformation in your vision so eloquently. I've sometimes thought of it as 'bringing someone into focus.' When I can get the focus right, put on the right glasses of seeing someone for who they are, everyone becomes attractive. And, of course, that includes the middle school 'bitches', some of whom came back after the dystopia fishbowl of middle school. I've come to a place of forgiveness for them too, which Veronica did long ago.
Yes on the casual ridicule of anti-vaxxers being disappointing. It's why I thought Manufacturing Contempt was a good follow-up. Aubrey has been at the brunt of one form of manufactured contempt yet has fallen for another one. That's a conversation I'd like to have with her.
Again, your sentence brings tears to my eyes, "We're always doing our best in a very distorted world." That self-forgiveness is so important.
Veronica sounds wise beyond years - as often happens - and reminds in another way how we make unfounded assumptions based on all kinds of physical things - like size and years in a body.
Thank you. And I'd love to hear about that conversation with Aubrey if you have it.
It is all tied together, isn't it? I often say Veronica has more emotional intelligence than anyone I know. Would that have been the case if she'd stayed as 'pathologically popular' as she was through 2nd grade? At that time, she had so much approval from her peer group, where she was the queen bee, that she was kind of a brat. I've written before about the things I did to interfere with that: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-caret-system.
By middle school, I went from trying to push her friends away to her not having friends. She went from fighting with me tooth and nail, running away to hide under the stairs or to the tree up the block, to coming to me for solace. Our relationship has stayed strong ever since.
Veronica just told me a dream she had where she went back to HS and had the confidence to initiate things with Otto, the guy she'd had a crush on. They got together and she was at the community college when James walked past. She started talking to him but it was clear from his reaction, he didn't know who she was. Then Otto came up and put his arm around her. And she realized that you can't go back and change something without changing everything. If you like who you are now, you can't reject anything that got you to that point.
That makes me feel better about any of my 'mistakes.'
"Would that have been the case if she'd stayed as 'pathologically popular' as she was through 2nd grade?"
I lean towards 'yes' with these kinds of questions; that our experiences in general provide the context needed to emerge who we are. It's vague - and doesn't exclude the experience of suffering as something we don't have compassion for, or mean we shouldn't act in the face of it, but still allow difficulty as part of an unseen intelligence operating on our behalf. It's usually where we grow.
Which is echoed by your "If you like who you are now, you can't reject anything that got you to that point."
Just that.
When I think back on what I didn't and didn't do with my children, I can always find reasons to judge myself and yet I did my best at the time.
Always an opportunity to find deeper trust. So much we can't see and don't know.
I remember the CIM talking about how forgiveness changes the past and while I couldn't explain that with reason alone, always struck me as deeply true.
I forgot that you knew the CIM! Yes. I just started at the beginning again where it defines the miracle and read that the miracle changes the temporal order because it's always an ending and a rebirth, that goes back to the beginning. By changing the future, it changes the past.
How much is that confirmed by all my research into the world wars? The lesson we'd been taught is that humans are fundamentally vicious and hateful and cruel, for no reason. And now I find that was a story, used to manipulate others into being vicious and hateful and cruel in retaliation. When I'm ready to reconsider the past, it seems the research appears, as if by magic.
That's really the mother's perspective, that we're all doing our best at the time.
I'm a survivor of a hyperactive thyroid. 35+ years ago, Kaiser's head endocrine guru talked me into knocking it down with propylthiouracil (PTU). Pre-PTU, after more or less regular meals during the day, I could eat half a bag of Chips Ahoy and a quart of milk before bedtime and not gain weight for years. Immediately Post-PTU, I had to be much more cautious about such intake. Not long after that, I started on a thyroid supplement and, as Linda Ellerbe used to close with, "So it goes." To steal a vaxxer's line, "It might have been so much worse...if I had had the stroke that was forecast as a strong possibility if I had declined the PTU."
I'm generally with Pauline wrt being skeptical about the limitations of how happy someone can be on the inside of an XXXL meat suit (promo code: Tonika). All the issues she mentioned plus hips, knees and feet and sprinkle cardio & respiratory on top. There are outliers. At the neighborhood gym & pool where I swim, there is a XXXL guy who most folks would at first and second glance presume to be an out of shape glutton, but he runs one of the aerobics classes upstairs. Sometimes the ball falls in the green slot on the roulette wheel. Similarly, the woman who leads the deep-water aerobics class at the pool is XL and might not be named Bartlett, but most people would call her pear-shaped, and she keeps the class active for about 50 minutes 5 days per week. So, we can make observations and predictions over a population of plus-sized humans based on data and we can make suggestions to the group that may be quite accurate overall, but although this Aubrey character probably doesn't present as though she works in masonry construction hauling and setting bricks, taking a melon out of her cart seems like a major overreach by an actual or wannabe queen bee bureaucrat. (That Aubrey seems to generally approve of intrusive gubmint 'help' on other matters may be an indication that the jab juice has affected her brain for the worse, but, maybe, like Lady Gaga, she was just born that way.)
Art Linkletter had a show called "People Are Funny". I never saw it other than briefly as the knob was being rotated to wind up on some other TV destination. Aubrey makes the title true, but not so funny.
Ordered the Empire book this afternoon. Yes on The Rainbow, no thanks on The Wake.
These are for the people under the 60-80% most likely to be healthy middle part of the bell curve(s?)
This Austin group is probably no longer together, but lead guitarist, Carolyn Wonderland is still active. Acoustic guitarist & vocalist, Shelly King, often accompanies Carolyn's small group, so if you're in Austin on business, check to see if Carolyn's re playing in town. If visiting friends, they really should know...if not, go to a show and widen your circle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlfpDeIxCOI
I definitely haven't had the candor to post everything I want to say, including the fact that it seems to live as you are, or even to change... You have to accept yourself as you are either way.
That's been difficult for me, which ironically that despite spending years this say I still struggle with some ingrained form of vanity.
Thanks for this kind and humorous exploration of a big topic!
Thank you for giving a human and male face to this experience, Gabe. It's very brave of you. Being focused on the female side with daughters, it didn't occur to me that this would speak to you even though I'd read your NY resolutions post and knew this was something you were addressing.
I think you should hold onto that vanity and merge it with who you are right now. Knowing you as I do, I can't see you as anything but beautiful, to use a feminine term that shouldn't be restricted. Your generous body is at one with your outlook on life and other people, your insight and sensitivity and vulnerability.
I'm so glad you show your real face and not an emoji or photoshop version, so that all of us who love you can extend that feeling and potential to everyone who shares your morphology. Like Kathleen's experience at the party, it does change things to know just one person who changes your projection, whether that's blame or pity.
As I mentioned here somewhere, my youngest daughter has had a rapid weight gain and shares the 'fuck you' attitude of her uncle, which has had me worried. When she told me about Aubrey's podcast and the anti-fat bias she exposes, I stopped worrying. If there's a cause to be fought, there's no one better than my fierce daughter.
Now it's something she's owning and identifying with, to stand up for other people. It now makes it a neutral topic, where we can both encourage that pride and can look at it as any other health issue of whether there are factors making things harder than they need to be--like thyroid, birth control prescriptions, food reactions.
I hope you do have the candor to do the post on how accepting yourself as you are is paradoxically a catalyst to change. On my YT, someone I respect has talked about shame being uncomfortable but necessary. I don't agree and haven't found that true in my life or my daughters'.
Sometimes I think that, before birth, we agree to the experience that we're going to bring meaning out of in our life. I can't imagine anyone better than you to represent this issue in a way that brings greater understanding and resolves it so we're not stuck in past cycles. And you bring the awareness of trauma and its impact, and how we embody that, perhaps in carrying it as emotional and physical weight. If there's truth that we choose the role we play in life, I'm grateful you chose this. It's very 'big' of you ;-)
Aw, I love what you said about your daughter, how you wish you had known it would all be okay even sooner. This, especially in light of a story my youngest sister recently told me about my mom asking a plastic surgeon if he could "help her too". Man. There is a lot to learn. I loved the message that what other people look like and what other people eat is no one's business. Everyone isn't working with the same chemistry, that's for sure. I mean, most of the food at the grocery store isn't real either. If we could poison ourselves less many of us would stop having so many responses to that too. In my mind, the "food" not really being nutritional anymore plays a big role. I have a lot of food sensitivities, if I ate things that upset my system, I would get fluffy QUICKLY. Some of us are just built strong too. I have broad shoulders and strong, thick legs. I can use that leg machine at the gym like it's nothing when my 21 year old can't do the weight I am doing and then walk outa there. I am a strong woman. I have heard this one MANY TIMES "oooh, baby, YOU THICK". So many times, as a matter of fact, that the last time the guy looked me up and down and he smiled slowly and started to open his mouth........."Oooohh,, guuurrrlll............you......" I said "Stop right there. Oh baby, you thick." And he started laughing......."How did you?........." "Come on man, get some better material." HAAAAAAhaha. We are all more than these bodies. That's for sure. May everyone have everything they need! It feels so good to hear you saying nice things about me :) I appreciate you. You are right, it is my delight.
It was such a delight to play with your images, Amy. It feels like a conversation between you, me and spirit--that may seem like deifying AI but everything's different when you bring love to it. And judgment (of people, not ideas) is the obstacle to love.
As I wrote in our chat regarding the 'beauty stupor' that your feast of sumptuous images can induce: "I'm especially pleased with my choices of placement for your art. It feels almost like preparing a multicourse meal, where it mixes them up in patterns of several, then one, then three that are similar, then a bunch where each one contrasts with the last. I think it made them hyperpalatable, a joke you'll get when you read it, for sustained consumption. In this case the synthetic AIness is being used for love, to open up people's eyes to different beauties. I'm really proud of it."
I showed Veronica your images and she loved them. She was happy I was doing this post and gave me permission to use her story. Curiously, she mentioned that she was sorry my mom went through life not feeling good about her body. I have some clothes my grandmother made for my mom as a young woman, and the waists wouldn't fit anyone over 6 yrs old. When she was pregnant with me, the doctors put her on diet pills because they thought she'd gained too much weight with my brother! She was zipping around vacuuming at 9 pm, high on speed. She was on Weight Watchers and I later found her Jane Fonda and Jack Lelanne videos. And this is a normal healthy petite woman who lived to be 96.
"Everyone isn't working with the same chemistry, that's for sure." Great statement! I think that's where I carried the most guilt--did I assume my body chemistry that wasn't as reactive to sugars? In fifth grade, Veronica agreed to do this 'Healthy Way' program with a strict eating regime and weekly weigh-ins. I'm cringing writing this, although the people were lovely and encouraging. I remember a school teacher who gave out candy rewards for right answers, and Veronica's embarrassment at telling her she couldn't have them. At the end of the month was Halloween and Veronica eased back in treats when she practiced piano. I remember noticing that her concentration would get a little more diffuse as she ate sugar. I'm choosing to believe we're all doing everything right, even myself, and this was useful later, although I still cringe.
It IS so hard when we're bombarded with impossible body ideals on one hand, and food designed to sabotage us on the other. And we're all running our own experiments with doctors deluded by fake 'science' and marketing scams.
Thick! I thought this morning that was one positive adjective I didn't suggest trying as a prompt. Now that I realize it's become a pick-up line, I'm glad ;-) Great story! But fluffy is my new favorite word. That's such an excellent descriptor. Veronica will love it.
I have not looked into it. I will stick it under my hat and look into it. I am zooming at the speed of light this week. :) I am sure it’s not that hard to do, thanks for bringing it up.
Just to save you time, it's the three dots across from my title that gives a drop-down option to cross post. Just if you want to get out a quick post on your site with no work involved. But there are many in the original draft you've shared with me that should also have a coming-out party. I love having it as my private fishing pond but sharing is caring, and all good things come back around.
I see. Well I appreciate that. I don't really think in terms of subscribers so I am long in learning the ins and outs of these things. There is much more to be done than I have done. But I would share your Round Body post simply because it is so good. So, I shall. Let me sit on it for a minute though, because I may have more to add. I just got done towing my husbands A/C work truck out of a ditch with our truck. Haha. I am back up at 5am. May it be nice out. I am excited to get back to it! Thank you. I enjoy working with you. *curtsy....(I was gonna say booty pop, but I am not a botty pop kind of girl, I am more of a freestyler.) I like to keep it weird and original. Also, I love it when people dance in union, but I never do it. I always dance inbewteen them in zig zags, like they are all my backup. It goes over well at weddings.
I'm soon driving up to my daughter's house, from whence we'll leave for Bellingham and Vancouver tomorrow. So my attention is sporadic too but it will be fun to see my post on your site! It will certainly give the message to others that stealing is welcome.
How many readers do I have who comment regularly--a couple dozen? What are the odds of having three people, you, Mark and Amy, with this knowledge and facility of classical music? When my blog has nothing to do with that?
Depends on which Stravinsky. For me, the big three early ballets (Petrushka, Firebird, Spring) are yummy treats for the ear. The later neo-classical stuff, not so much.
Speaking of Rach, I adore his "Lilacs" solo piano arrangement, but every time I try to play it, it sounds terrible. Here's a beautiful performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaiAPSBRfdE
Thanks again for mentioning Rachmaninoff. I've started working on "Lilacs" again and this time I think I can make progress, by working backwards from the end (i.e., harder to easier). I'm not crazy about all of his music, but this thing is special and obviously the work of a great genius.
While beautiful, AI generated images typically use artists, photographers and other creatives' work without their consent. Their work is scraped from the Net, rendering them invisible and silencing their original voice. Despite the copyright inherent in original human generated works of art, artists are not acknowledged or compensated. (An artist in my community brought this to my attention. I imagine there are many others who aren't aware, including among those who generate the AI images.)
If the person who generates the AI art for your Stack has found a way to use only the work of creatives who have consented to this, please let me know. And by consented, I don't mean they've unwittingly agreed to the terms and conditions that accompany setting up a Facebook page.
Yes the same thing is being done with Substack content, it's written into the fine print that you can decline but also says they may do it anyway.
I have two questions: what's your goal and what's your strategy?
My goal is that all of us have agreeable ways to make a living so that we can give the best of ourselves for free, in all ways that are infinitely replicable. So if someone makes a physical object that can only live in one place, that should be paid. But if that can go everywhere at no additional cost, it should be freely given. Right now, most paid art is for advertising, which seems unsatisfying to both the artist and the public. here's my economic plan that talks about it: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/five-feminine-economies.
But more to the point, it doesn't matter what you or I think should be done. Our choice consists of looking at it, using it or boycotting it altogether. If you think that boycotting it will change it, that's what you should do. It's not my choice, however. This one speaks to that strategy: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/be-the-change-is-chump-change.
Yes, writers' work is also used this way and not just on Substack. It's unfortunate that creative human endeavours are being used without our consent to train our replacements. Once the AI is "skilled" enough in mimicry that it can fool the audience, writers and artists won't be needed ... even for advertising. That's sad as then there won't be much incentive to train or create at the professional level. I don't view AI developed art as creating art, in much the same way as using it to write an essay or story isn't creative.
I'm not sure that I agree that most paid art is being used for advertising, but I have no interest in trying to prove or disprove that right now.
I don't believe that art that can "go everywhere at no additional cost" should necessarily be freely given. That should be the creator's choice, as copyright laws state. If I buy an original painting, that doesn't give me the right to copy it and freely distribute the copies digitally just because they can go anywhere. And if I take a photo of it and publish it on Facebook, that shouldn't give Facebook the right to allow AI use of it, as it is still under copyright. That's in fact what we're talking about with some of the art AI uses to "create" its images. Not advertising pieces, but purloined art images. For one thing, we don't all have "agreeable ways to make a living" so that we can give the best of us away for free.
As I've just learned about this, I don't yet have a goal or a strategy. But I do know that I won't buy or use AI generated art. That's not a judgement on those who make a different choice. It's just a place to stand as a human being in a world that appears to want to make useless eaters out of the lot of us.
The most fundamental question, I believe, is whether life has a purpose or what happens is just random. If the latter, then all of the most dire predictions are just realistic.
I write about the time 20 yrs ago when I learned about the violence that goes into all the products that sustain my life. I was horrified and paralyzed. There was nothing I could buy without guilt. I spent over a decade engaging with fair trade organizations, educating my kids, supporting NGOs that fought back. I spent another decade writing my book that shows money itself is a unit of slave labor. That's what backs money and always has, making us complicit in the conquest of our neighbors.
My position now is that we didn't create the conditions we were born into and believing that individual consumer choices can change it is saying that we're more moral than all the people who've gone before us. They could have chosen differently but didn't. I think it's the system, not individual choices, that's crushing us.
Vegans are one form of moral purists, Amazon boycotters another. Someone victoriously showed recently that there were 7 of my books available at AbeBooks, mostly used. Now Amazon purists, who refuse to buy my book there, can get a used copy for only $5 more! Hooray! Of course I will make not a penny from that purchase but, hey, they can remain pure.
I really don't care. I now lose money on the ones I sell at the local bookshop because printing costs have risen. I only raise this point to illustrate that we can disempower ourselves and live very small lives in order to be 'innocent' or accept that our sacrifice does nothing to slow down the behemoth, and do what brings us joy and uses the position we've been born into to bring about meaning and change for all.
And yes, absolutely people don't have agreeable ways to make a living. Does anyone? That's the purpose of my economic plan. If that was available today, my entire book would be moot. And I do think what Amy does with AI is an art form. She's also a poet and her understanding of the medium and wording of prompts is not what I've seen anyone else do. She gives away her images and knowledge in how to use it and, like me, doesn't have paid subs. But I respect your choices too.
If life had no purpose, individual choices and free will wouldn't matter either. Then it would be just fine to live the easiest way possible, without concern for others... which is happening in our society precisely because people no longer see a purpose.
I get where you're coming from but believing we can change society by the choices we make is not necessarily saying we're more moral than previous generations. It's saying we know better than they did, often thanks to the independent media etc they didn't have access to. Thanks also to hindsight, experienced wisdom, time, exposure to more ideas and accurate information.
There's a middle ground between paralysis and giving up on the idea that individual choices matter. That's doing what we can. Buying meat from local food producers who treat animals well instead of factory farmed grocery store meat is one example that's not asking everyone to be vegan.
What I do doesn't have to change society. That's not why I do, or don't do, things. I do it because it's taking back power in a society that wants you to shut up and go along to get along.
It has nothing to do with moral superiority. I respect others' right to choose for themselves ... once their consent is informed consent. It has everything to do with not giving up. If individual choice doesn't matter, then individual human beings don't matter either. And if I can make a different choice, why wouldn't I?
Agreed. I suspect that I make many of the same consumer choices you do. I've just stopped telling other people what they should do. And I make the choices that bring me joy, which includes local animal husbandry and fair trade. For my daughters, press-on nails with rhinestone flames from China gets them through their slog of a job (citing the last purchase I saw come though the joint Amazon account.) I don't have any criticism of them. They're doing the best they can.
Amy's AI art brings me immense joy. It's also, in this article, being used to show round bodied women as beautiful, something that Amy had a hard time getting the algorithms to do. They're made to show wasp-waisted women with big pouchy lips and giraffe necks. I'm using AI art for the purpose of love--getting people to see others differently, and getting people to feel good about themselves. As you can see in some of the comments (including Amy and Gabe), this worked.
AI art is a powerful tool. It makes text more compelling. If people with good messages refuse to use it, so it's only used by people selling products or bad ideas, will that make AI art go away? I don't think so. I think it will just empower bad ideas.
We agree then that telling others what to do isn't the thing, nor is criticizing them. As long as people are informed so they can choose freely, I'm all for it.
All art can be powerful. But AI art is much less costly than hiring an artist to illustrate a point.
My comment wasn't an effort to get AI art to go away. Only to understand if you knew its source and the ramifications ... aka informed consent.
Thanks for the mature, polite exchange of ideas and for letting me take up space in your comment section. Enjoy your evening!
this is a lovely essay on the brutality of the human female on the human female. yikes! what a crazy world and i am filled with a kind of awe that her brutality became a wake up call for her to change out of the mob of a particular classification of deservedness that seems particularly pointed with women, perhaps especially young women.
and your comment about the food 'industry' and the kind of evil — my word, not yours — that has been made manifest within it from the psychology, emotionality and so-called health it is to provide. i've written extensively on my changed relationship to food as sacred medicine that became recognised when my muscle-intuitive process became the path into connecting with the divine joy / love that is foundation of life. gautama said it best 'trust your self'. that seems to be what your daughter was able to wake up to! an amazingly rare experience.
i've also written that a key cornerstone to obedience to authority began when agriculture separated those with control of the food with those who look to the controllers to be fed. your essay hints at that in a rather pernicious, eugenical way: the controllers of food create the energy of deserving and undeserving, perhaps even the root of that pernicious energy. and now the controllers of food and medicine exploit that as we see being made manifest in the many unconscious ways fat is equated with unconscious undeservedness and condescension. and with death protocols of obedience to the authorities of the many false dietary fads that promote ill health and deepens separation of self from soul using food and fat.
interesting topic with many ramifications that can be explored, including the nature of a deliberately hyper-activated devouring 'mother' energy looking to protect when, perhaps, protection is not the action. straight talk, as jeanie finlay argues. all those 'soft' words, and those kindly meant and hurtful splits between being x or beautiful. (another subtle bifurcation) grounded in that deserving/undeserving duality.)
I mean to credit you every time I show that Laura Mvula video. Veronica and I were dancing to it on fourth of July. I just love it and am always grateful you showed it to me!
You would have to talk to Veronica about whether she felt I had "deliberately hyper-activated devouring mother energy looking to protect when, perhaps, protection is not the action." I don't think either she or I know what the right course of action would have been but I know she'd never refer to me as a devouring mother.
You cite that this is an eternal truth, evidenced by ancient drawings of vaginas with teeth and indigenous ceremonies pretending to 'kidnap' sons from mothers who don't want to give them up. You give Fiamengo's statistics that more mothers kill their children than fathers do. You list terrible mothers like Anneke Lucas' and Hilary Clinton and the queen of Belgium. You say women do terrible things like female circumcision. And you insist, these are not the exceptions but the rule: we are being killed by too much motherly caring, 'healthed to death'.
I did mention your comment to Veronica while we were dancing to Mvula. She wondered how the stats on women killing their children compare to the amount of time women spend caring for their children--are these accidents, with infants in particular being inherently fragile? Are these mothers who are overwhelmed and go temporarily insane? Is mothering such a hazardous, exhausting job demanding 24/7 eternal vigilance that it's a wonder any of us gets through it without going insane? Especially with no support from family and society.
You see my essay as about women's brutality against women. You see terrible mothers as the norm--the nature of mothers, not made by circumstances. You see me as a devouring mother when I'm looking to protect my child. You prefer 'straight talk' (telling people they're fat and ugly rather than 'You're not fat, you're beautiful'?) You see too much feminine influence as the problem in society, not patriarchal systems.
i don't see too much 'devouring mother' energy as *the* problem. not any more than i see 'toxic masculinity' as *the* problem. and i didn't think or call you or even infer that you are/were a devouring mother. i've not thought that or said it. in fact i suspect that your daughter's ability to break free from her toxic relationship with devouring immature female energy was largely due to your strong feminine energy.
you are misreading my words; and completely negating my 'dogma' that singularity-ism is a toxic prelude to duality as poison.
what i am saying is that we have blinded ourselves (been blinded by fabian new age delusion) to the presence of a negative feminine energy that makes itself manifest in the same way that we blind ourselves that the only 'bad' thing in society is toxic patriarchy as manifested in church or corporate structures.
i don't see terrible mothers as the norm any more than i see terrible fathers as the norm. (i had both.) if both were the norm society would likely completely collapse. it is simply that we are in a very unbalanced state of glorifying the mother energy as the saviour if it were set free and vilifying the masculine energy as that which has killed life, especially the feminine.
i have come to believe that that is likely part of the psyop: imbalanced energies by undeserving the one and overdeserving the other. the destruction of the family is easily done when we blind ourselves to the humanity of both men and woman: men as the embodiment of patriarchal evil that deserves prison and debasement; women as the givers of life and succour who can do not wrong. both are incorrect. and both ideologies folded into one another allow for us to be psychologically manipulated into creating a deserving/underserving ideology that splits the sexds.
and that is what the woke energy of transhuminism non-sex craziness that requires sexual mutilation is all about.
and mixed in there is the creation through trauma of the narcissistic men and women who are truly destructive. it isn't just *men*. it isn't just *women*. we are facing a full on frontal assault on children by both in order to create enough schismogenetic trauma that will allow and condone men and women who will abuse the anneke lucas' and millions of other children.
We live in different realities, Guy. Nowhere is there the 'glorification of the mother energy as the savior if it were set free' except in my system design. What you call 'mother energy' is just propaganda used to serve investor profits. It has zero benefit to mothers. You've never heard me talk about "men as the embodiment of patriarchal evil that deserves prison and debasement." You're the one who talks about the other gender in insulting generalities, not me.
These are insecure middle school girls, not a "toxic relationship with devouring immature female energy." There's no devouring going on in the lunch room. I think that was Veronica's point. Lots of posing, no eating. The 'devouring female energy' was a girl insecure about her own weight whose own mother was dying of cancer at the time. I hear she's now a mother of two and has a flower stand, and is probably a perfectly nice person.
If there's a full frontal assault on children but mothers already have too much power, who do you expect to protect them? Everything that I do is to empower mothers, everything that you do pushes back against what you perceive as too much power. We're at cross purposes.
i see, i think, where you are coming from. and from what i see i don't actually think we are actually at cross *purposes*. we are at a crossed language barrier/conflict.
i am speaking of devouring mother energy as metaphorical description of the mother that wants to keep their children safe at the expense of their children's freedom and individuality. and somehow you have taken this language literally and as if i am citing it as a singular cause of social 'trouble'.
actually i don't really see this as separate from the 'toxic' patriarchal energy that wants to keep their power structure safe at the expense of individual freedom and individuality. both come from the same place. the one is the boot in the face (orwell), the other is the jab in the arm (convid).
describing teenage girls being brutally mean to each other as a kind of natural expression of pubescent insecurity and conflating my comment with food misses the essence of what is happening in a kind of rhetorical deflection. the use of pubescent confusion to induce self sexual mutilation with drugs and/or surgery, 'for your own health', is what kind of expressed energy? a system problem? if so, where did the energy of that 'system' get its genesis? something like 'this is for your own happiness'. hmmmmmm.
and actually you do kind of generalise about the toxic nature of the patriarchy as being that which has created the unhealthy systems which you write are the root of our societal problems. my discussion is to expand beyond a 'system', especially one (or ones) successful enough to guide the society goodly or badly, to include the role that unbalanced female psychological energy has in the creation and perpetuation of the systems you have solely ascribed, generally, to men. perhaps you have in earlier essays described the way that women help perpetuate harmful systems, and if so, please direct me to them. i would love to see your perspective on that to help me to understand better this amazing changing time we are living in.
as to protecting the children, your statement oddly excludes men as possible protectors. why? in a very 'general' kind of way family protection was once considered one of the key social (even mythological or archetypal) roles of men. it was not the role of the mother, whose primary role, in that old-fashioned world view(?), was of nurturing healthy children. in that mythological(?) world women didn't need to protect and nurture. your statement now infers that the mothers, only, can be (are?) the protectors of their children as well as being their nurturers. where does that leave men, speaking of broad generalities? the source of sperm only and after that that which provides the threat that mothers need to protect their children from? these are the ideologies that janice fiamengo (https://substack.com/@fiamengofile) and bettina arndt (https://substack.com/@bettinaarndt) write about as they have become manifest in imbalanced laws designed to be hurtful to men.
and that is, in many ways, exactly how the society has broken down. for example, boys in today's schools are being indoctrinated by a gynocentric ideology that men, especially white men, are the singular source of all that is bad in the world and the history of the world — violence, hurtful systems, colonisation, and genocides. (and that isn't really an exaggeration, from all that i've read about the woke state of the government constructed school systems.) as an powerful example of even that at the university level the north korean refugee yeonmi park described her disappointment with columbia university when when she discovered, while there, anti-male woke ideolgy was being imposed on her with things like being forced by coercive ideological pressure to dislike listening to the dead white men like bach and mozart because they were white men. further, she felt less free to speak her truth at columbia then she did while in north korea where she didn't know she didn't have the freedom to speak truthfully. if you are curious, jordan peterson actually cries over the death of this university with it having become a subtly coercive indoctrination system. 'Tyranny, Slavery and Columbia U | Yeonmi Park | EP 172.' https://youtu.be/8yqa-SdJtT4)
and, at the end of the day, my use of the very old phrase 'devouring mother' or if i were to use 'destructive father' — which is an absolute reality too! — is coming from a psychological perspective as descriptions of those energies that can be activated in people. and 'people' includes men and women that can and do hurts boys, girls, as well as other women and men.
i'm not saying all or even most woman are devouring, unlike how men have been *generally* vilified in the last 40 years or more, with such ideologies is that all men are potential rapists. what i am saying is that when these energies are not seen very well, they will allow us to mis-understand things like the (false) value of blaming others — oligarchs, systems, governments, schools — for the problems of life as we experience it. all of these 'systems' are the collective expression of people. and to the extent that the people within these systems are out of balance with the energies of life — masculine and feminine within men and women — the systems will be out of balance and our social structures more hurtful than supportive of the individuality of human creative expression.
i hope that clarifies my position by more sharply defining my use of the phrases you have found troublesome generalities.
There are two questions here: One, am I misunderstanding your meaning? Two, do we disagree? My position is that we fundamentally disagree at the level of my dogma, that people are inherently good and, when they behave badly, systems and stories are to blame.
This is what I'm choosing to believe and how I'm choosing to live my life, not something I'm willing to raise to question. Every disagreement I have with everyone is in defense of human nature being good and individuals behaving badly, not because they're inferior morally, but because of what's been done to them.
The systems of Western religion, philosophy, government, medicine, education, media, language, law and economics were indisputably designed by men and designed specifically to exclude women. The word patriarchy is redundant because the archons were men by definition. The system of hierarchy and competition only pertained to men, women didn't exist in it.
I criticize ideas, not people. The story of the devouring mother may be ancient but the phrase itself is a judgment. You define it as a "metaphorical description of the mother that wants to keep their children safe at the expense of their children's freedom and individuality." Every mother walks that line every day of her children's lives.
I erred, if I did, on the side of more freedom and individuality. Veronica was just pointing out that it's the close calls that still cause me trauma. I had just talked to her about doing a sage ritual to let go of the dozen times my lack of 100% vigilance could have resulted in one of them being disappeared forever, killed or permanently maimed. Although my husband was there or the only one there for most of them, it would have been myself I could never have forgiven.
I can't even write that without feeling sick. Had any of those resulted in what could have happened, I could never have this conversation with you neutrally, blaming mothers for being overprotective, which you call devouring.
From what you've said, Guy, you were subjected to an extreme form of trauma and abuse. Your mother, who you won't call your mother even after her death, behaved terribly to you. Why did she do this? What happened to her to cause her to act that way towards the people who loved her the most?
From what I've read, you see this as who she was, not how she behaved. You blame her and don't see her as a victim. You continue to 'punish' her by withholding your love even after her death. I define love and forgiveness as giving someone the benefit of the doubt that what they do is for a reason, that seems to them like the best choice available at the time.
I'm not the right person or place to address that but it's where our dogmas diverge. All people can't be innocent if your mother is guilty. From that point on, it's a matter of judging who's more guilty, making others more innocent. And anyone I argue is innocent, including mothers who overprotect or kill their children, must make others guilty, like men.
Your mother failed to protect you and your sisters. She wasn't overprotective. Insurances aren't paying doctors $80K for vaccinating patients because they care too much about our safety to give us individual choice and freedom. They exploit our desire to protect but the only people fighting back are the ones going to great lengths to protect their children.
If you're not willing to entertain the possibility that all people, including your mother, are inherently good if our systems and stories supported that, we disagree at the level of dogma. And as Laura Mvula says, That's alright. We don't need to agree but it's not that I'm misunderstanding you.
again, i don't disagree with you. i do believe that all people are born inherently good and that the systems we have, designed by the archons (men or aliens?) are the mechanism of the schismogenetic nature of our society that creates the energy of deserving and undeserving that allows for the moral justification of killing by both traumatised men and traumatised women. fortunately the system is perfect and many, perhaps even most people, men and women, aren't completely destructively traumatised to the point satanic and/or eugenical ideology.
where we perhaps disagree is that you 'blame' the system(s) as the primary source of 'the' problem(s) and i argue that the system(s) continue because the traumatised men and women within them perpetuate the schismogenetic / traumatising system(s). it is inherently wrong to exclude half of humanity from the success of the traumatising system(s) and to blame solely the archons (men?) for having created those systems.
oh! and i infer that my writing about my exploration of my relationship with terry, my mother, has not explicitly made clear that i actually do forgive my her for being human and traumatised. i do see her as a victim of trauma, likely familial male sexual assault perhaps with the collusion, consciously or not, of her mother. and likely she carried ancestral trauma through the unconscious processes that traumatised people have of transmitting trauma into their children. her parents were also victims of a system(s) trauma that had been perpetuated by the traumatised women and men who lived it before them. also my mother was, imo, a victim of the bizarre religious mind control crap of her mother's twist on christianity that was later compounded by new age delusion - also a system of course, created by the mk-ultra system by all likelihood.
i also see my father as victim of trauma and the systems of trauma, very specifically in his case the active debasement of men in the multitude of ways that were and are being done. that was predated and compounded what his childhood experience was with having been raised by a mother who was in and out of insane asylums during his childhood. that was then compounded by serving as an 18 year old soldier in korea. that particular trauma had his body physically jump up from the bed, with a horrified gasp of air, an inch or two from the surface whenever he was touched or spoken to when waking him from sleep. he was still doing that at the age of 50 when my parents separated.
we humans create and are created by our systems: language, categorisations, ostensible priorities and unconscious beliefs. as we humans evolve enough to take personal responsibility for our shadow, our belief systems, that responsibility will automatically change the systems that have created us and that we are concomitantly, unconsciously, creating. very challenging process that involves how both men and women, as energies of creative and nurturing, building and maintaining, use them for 'good' or for 'bad.'
as gautama and other wise people of both genders have said, until we see with clarity, change is difficult. how do we know we are or not seeing clearly? hmmmmm. that is a real question that gets answered in the loving or hurtful natures of our social structures and/or systems.
i appreciate your passion and stance. you are helping me see more clearly my own ideas and how the society is structured around the collective ideas, ideals and ideologies of our time as structured from past forms of beliefs and truths. all the best with what is changing. everything changes.
Oh my, these images are gorgeous! There’s something purely earthly about big bodies. Maybe it’s my culture too where often the elder wise women took on a bodacious presence. But I think of Gaia as chunky and big bosomed, enough to feed all her children. But sexy at the same time too. Folks put too much effort in shaming other peoples’ bodies. Sheesh! Much rather connect on a spiritual and mental level. Who cares what your meat suit looks like!
Aren't they though? Someday you'll tell me the trick of getting them into iMovie, although I don't mind having people need to come here where they can savor them for more than a flash. In fact, it's probably a good limitation that I can't.
And yes! My next Amy & me collaborative project (after Kathleen's SOTU challenge) is the second coming of religious figures as female--a female Buddha, earth-goddess Messiah, fleshy Isis nursing a greedy Horus, troublemaker and vixen, powerful rebellious Mary. Gaia has to be big-bosomed, yes.
"elder wise women took on a bodacious presence" Great phrase!
Looking forward to the next collab!
Love this one, Tereza.
Enjoyed this Tereza. Thank you.
In truth, I'm sceptical any obese (and forget the BMI stuff) individual is as happy with themselves as they can be. It's a lot of weight to carry about, regardless of how attractive, beautiful one is or how they carry it off.
I know some very large folk, beautiful also (indeed more lovely than my slimer self could ever be)...yet there's a cost, movement/mobility, health - often comes with other conditions incl diabetes, back probs, eating issues, etc).
I think it has become more normalised in the US...when in reality it's not the healthiest way to be.
Huge food portions aren't healthy, yet more commonplace here.
I always say a little prayer when I see extremely large bodies...i assume they're struggling. And if I happen to glance at their food trolley full of crappy food I also consider an eating disorder...more suffering.
I have experience of both bulimia and anorexia when younger...so of course, that kind of skinny is neither healthy - physically or psychologically, obviously.
So much is related to vanity and self worth. How do we best live in the body we have....which necessarily changes.
Incidentally, I also believe many larger women (it's mostly female) don't know they have a thyroid issue. A major root cause of hypothyroidism is Hashimoto's thyroiditis (autoimmune).
Chris A Knobbe wrote a fabulous book - 'The ancestral Diet Revolution: How Vegetable Oils and Processed Foods Destroy our Health - and How to Recover' (Ditch the seed oils)
Thank you, Pauline, and I agree, it's a delicate line. I definitely feel your compassion coming through. Are any of us as happy as we could be, if we lived in a system that supported instead of thwarted us? I think I'm one in a hundred people who has both time and money, and I live in the mecca of fresh food. I commented, half joking, half appalled, that everything I bought at the butcher counter last time was $32/ pound. As you and I know, that's being manipulated up by all the attacks on the food system. But organic, sustainably wild-caught, grass-finished, it all comes at a price.
Aubrey talks about a friend who manages her diabetes with Banquet frozen dinners. It's what doesn't trigger it but fits into the $40/ wk food budget she has. It's easy to see why someone without time, money, access would say 'fuck it' and fill up the trolley with food that works for them. I think we're all making the best choices we think are available to us. Sometimes, that's all the choices there are.
Veronica and her husband went to Denmark and she noticed that the 7-11 had ready made, fresh, affordable healthy food. I live by two catty-corner gas stations near the HS and the lines at lunch are 30 kids long with signs of 'no more than 5 students at a time'.
Obese people know that others are scrutinizing their carts (and I don't mean that for you, I think you're both positive and constructive). Aubrey talks about a woman taking a melon out of her cart and saying, 'That's too much sugar for you.' I wonder sometimes if compassion is a double-edged sword. It comes at an emotional cost, that doesn't do anything for the other person but takes something away from us. I think about this when I find myself feeling angry towards homeless people. Paradoxically, when I don't assume how miserable I'd be in their condition, I can see them neutrally--not eliciting my sympathy or anger.
Thanks for sharing your experience of bulimia and anorexia. That's so hard. My middle daughter was on my 'watch list' for anorexia, her dad still wonders if bulimia created the gerd she suffers with now although I don't think so. And wise of you to see that eating disorders go both ways.
How much of this would change if we, as communities, owned our economies, medical systems and food production? You make great points about hypothyroidism and seed oils. The youngest daughter, who told me about Aubrey's podcast, had a rapid weight gain maybe accelerated by birth control pills. She is a contrarian so advice is tricky. When she started talking about this podcast, I (mostly) stopped worrying. It became something named and owned. Rather than the identification being a 'resignation', it lets there be conversations about not accepting what might have a cause--checking her thyroid and food reactions. Now, that would be a whole lot easier with a functional medical system. But it makes me think that giving people pride and even 'glorifying' obesity is a step in the right direction. It brings it out of the closet. Thanks for your thoughtful response, Pauline.
What a visual feast!
The story of your brother in law and his undeveloped thyroid was interesting. Reading this I thought, how we can't judge, because we never know... and then instantly realized that thought only came up, because absent something identifiable, I do judge. Must be fear behind it.
I remember going to a party years ago, where I saw a very large and very unattractive woman. I instantly felt bad for her. (Projection!) Yet she wore a very colorful outfit and had dyed her un-manicured hair a bright red. I remember wondering why she would bring attention to herself. (Embarrassing now to reflect on.) We ended up having a great conversation - she was funny and bright and so comfortable in her own skin. Suffice to say by the end of the evening, I realized she knew things I didn't know, and had a sense of self that was neither obstructed by, nor rested on, physical appearance. I couldn't say the same.
She totally leaned into who she was physically and presented so positively - and with such intelligence, uniqueness and charm that you soon saw how attractive she actually was. It was a good lesson.
RE:"Yet she doesn’t extrapolate this to other pharmaceutical products when she encourages those who are fat to get the vaccine early without guilt, and says those juicing wheatgrass are ‘almost like anti-vaxxers but not quite.’
So disappointing. Not just the lack of extrapolation (though understandable given she encouraged others to take it) but the labeling of 'anti-vaxxers'. Aubrey would know the dehumanizing and reductive effects of labels... Ah, well.
And while I never had daughters I had friends with round daughters, who went through similar worries and often felt the need to address their daughter's weight, as if it was their failing.
We're always doing our best in a very distorted world.
Thanks Tereza. Good 'food' for thought here.
Your story brought tears to my eyes, Kathleen. You are relentlessly honest about yourself and describe the transformation in your vision so eloquently. I've sometimes thought of it as 'bringing someone into focus.' When I can get the focus right, put on the right glasses of seeing someone for who they are, everyone becomes attractive. And, of course, that includes the middle school 'bitches', some of whom came back after the dystopia fishbowl of middle school. I've come to a place of forgiveness for them too, which Veronica did long ago.
Yes on the casual ridicule of anti-vaxxers being disappointing. It's why I thought Manufacturing Contempt was a good follow-up. Aubrey has been at the brunt of one form of manufactured contempt yet has fallen for another one. That's a conversation I'd like to have with her.
Again, your sentence brings tears to my eyes, "We're always doing our best in a very distorted world." That self-forgiveness is so important.
Veronica sounds wise beyond years - as often happens - and reminds in another way how we make unfounded assumptions based on all kinds of physical things - like size and years in a body.
Thank you. And I'd love to hear about that conversation with Aubrey if you have it.
It is all tied together, isn't it? I often say Veronica has more emotional intelligence than anyone I know. Would that have been the case if she'd stayed as 'pathologically popular' as she was through 2nd grade? At that time, she had so much approval from her peer group, where she was the queen bee, that she was kind of a brat. I've written before about the things I did to interfere with that: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/the-caret-system.
By middle school, I went from trying to push her friends away to her not having friends. She went from fighting with me tooth and nail, running away to hide under the stairs or to the tree up the block, to coming to me for solace. Our relationship has stayed strong ever since.
Veronica just told me a dream she had where she went back to HS and had the confidence to initiate things with Otto, the guy she'd had a crush on. They got together and she was at the community college when James walked past. She started talking to him but it was clear from his reaction, he didn't know who she was. Then Otto came up and put his arm around her. And she realized that you can't go back and change something without changing everything. If you like who you are now, you can't reject anything that got you to that point.
That makes me feel better about any of my 'mistakes.'
"Would that have been the case if she'd stayed as 'pathologically popular' as she was through 2nd grade?"
I lean towards 'yes' with these kinds of questions; that our experiences in general provide the context needed to emerge who we are. It's vague - and doesn't exclude the experience of suffering as something we don't have compassion for, or mean we shouldn't act in the face of it, but still allow difficulty as part of an unseen intelligence operating on our behalf. It's usually where we grow.
Which is echoed by your "If you like who you are now, you can't reject anything that got you to that point."
Just that.
When I think back on what I didn't and didn't do with my children, I can always find reasons to judge myself and yet I did my best at the time.
Always an opportunity to find deeper trust. So much we can't see and don't know.
I remember the CIM talking about how forgiveness changes the past and while I couldn't explain that with reason alone, always struck me as deeply true.
I forgot that you knew the CIM! Yes. I just started at the beginning again where it defines the miracle and read that the miracle changes the temporal order because it's always an ending and a rebirth, that goes back to the beginning. By changing the future, it changes the past.
How much is that confirmed by all my research into the world wars? The lesson we'd been taught is that humans are fundamentally vicious and hateful and cruel, for no reason. And now I find that was a story, used to manipulate others into being vicious and hateful and cruel in retaliation. When I'm ready to reconsider the past, it seems the research appears, as if by magic.
That's really the mother's perspective, that we're all doing our best at the time.
"When I'm ready to reconsider the past, it seems the research appears, as if by magic." Funny how that is.
And yes, agree. (A perspective in which we also still advocate wanting to be and do better.)
• The War on the Masculine and Feminine - AshaLogos
I just wanted to share this with you - a theme you have touched on several times. Not completely off topic here.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/uXt7t9teAaqr
13th Floor, Ladies' Archetypes, Models & Outliers
Daryl Hannah Dept.? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cUem1TifMg
Daryl Henna Dept.? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jDZ3oIMpv4
I'm a survivor of a hyperactive thyroid. 35+ years ago, Kaiser's head endocrine guru talked me into knocking it down with propylthiouracil (PTU). Pre-PTU, after more or less regular meals during the day, I could eat half a bag of Chips Ahoy and a quart of milk before bedtime and not gain weight for years. Immediately Post-PTU, I had to be much more cautious about such intake. Not long after that, I started on a thyroid supplement and, as Linda Ellerbe used to close with, "So it goes." To steal a vaxxer's line, "It might have been so much worse...if I had had the stroke that was forecast as a strong possibility if I had declined the PTU."
I'm generally with Pauline wrt being skeptical about the limitations of how happy someone can be on the inside of an XXXL meat suit (promo code: Tonika). All the issues she mentioned plus hips, knees and feet and sprinkle cardio & respiratory on top. There are outliers. At the neighborhood gym & pool where I swim, there is a XXXL guy who most folks would at first and second glance presume to be an out of shape glutton, but he runs one of the aerobics classes upstairs. Sometimes the ball falls in the green slot on the roulette wheel. Similarly, the woman who leads the deep-water aerobics class at the pool is XL and might not be named Bartlett, but most people would call her pear-shaped, and she keeps the class active for about 50 minutes 5 days per week. So, we can make observations and predictions over a population of plus-sized humans based on data and we can make suggestions to the group that may be quite accurate overall, but although this Aubrey character probably doesn't present as though she works in masonry construction hauling and setting bricks, taking a melon out of her cart seems like a major overreach by an actual or wannabe queen bee bureaucrat. (That Aubrey seems to generally approve of intrusive gubmint 'help' on other matters may be an indication that the jab juice has affected her brain for the worse, but, maybe, like Lady Gaga, she was just born that way.)
Art Linkletter had a show called "People Are Funny". I never saw it other than briefly as the knob was being rotated to wind up on some other TV destination. Aubrey makes the title true, but not so funny.
Ordered the Empire book this afternoon. Yes on The Rainbow, no thanks on The Wake.
These are for the people under the 60-80% most likely to be healthy middle part of the bell curve(s?)
Greek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi7cpEVFNgk
Roman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYjKElFCUjE
Dealer's choice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zh6TnNHFfY
This Austin group is probably no longer together, but lead guitarist, Carolyn Wonderland is still active. Acoustic guitarist & vocalist, Shelly King, often accompanies Carolyn's small group, so if you're in Austin on business, check to see if Carolyn's re playing in town. If visiting friends, they really should know...if not, go to a show and widen your circle. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlfpDeIxCOI
Carolyn's small group before Shelly's time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odmgJAiUCHE
I've been meaning to write more of my perspective on being fat on my personal blog.
I opened the door with my new years resolutions post: https://gabe.rocks/health/2023-resolutions/
I definitely haven't had the candor to post everything I want to say, including the fact that it seems to live as you are, or even to change... You have to accept yourself as you are either way.
That's been difficult for me, which ironically that despite spending years this say I still struggle with some ingrained form of vanity.
Thanks for this kind and humorous exploration of a big topic!
Thank you for giving a human and male face to this experience, Gabe. It's very brave of you. Being focused on the female side with daughters, it didn't occur to me that this would speak to you even though I'd read your NY resolutions post and knew this was something you were addressing.
I think you should hold onto that vanity and merge it with who you are right now. Knowing you as I do, I can't see you as anything but beautiful, to use a feminine term that shouldn't be restricted. Your generous body is at one with your outlook on life and other people, your insight and sensitivity and vulnerability.
I'm so glad you show your real face and not an emoji or photoshop version, so that all of us who love you can extend that feeling and potential to everyone who shares your morphology. Like Kathleen's experience at the party, it does change things to know just one person who changes your projection, whether that's blame or pity.
As I mentioned here somewhere, my youngest daughter has had a rapid weight gain and shares the 'fuck you' attitude of her uncle, which has had me worried. When she told me about Aubrey's podcast and the anti-fat bias she exposes, I stopped worrying. If there's a cause to be fought, there's no one better than my fierce daughter.
Now it's something she's owning and identifying with, to stand up for other people. It now makes it a neutral topic, where we can both encourage that pride and can look at it as any other health issue of whether there are factors making things harder than they need to be--like thyroid, birth control prescriptions, food reactions.
I hope you do have the candor to do the post on how accepting yourself as you are is paradoxically a catalyst to change. On my YT, someone I respect has talked about shame being uncomfortable but necessary. I don't agree and haven't found that true in my life or my daughters'.
Sometimes I think that, before birth, we agree to the experience that we're going to bring meaning out of in our life. I can't imagine anyone better than you to represent this issue in a way that brings greater understanding and resolves it so we're not stuck in past cycles. And you bring the awareness of trauma and its impact, and how we embody that, perhaps in carrying it as emotional and physical weight. If there's truth that we choose the role we play in life, I'm grateful you chose this. It's very 'big' of you ;-)
Aw, I love what you said about your daughter, how you wish you had known it would all be okay even sooner. This, especially in light of a story my youngest sister recently told me about my mom asking a plastic surgeon if he could "help her too". Man. There is a lot to learn. I loved the message that what other people look like and what other people eat is no one's business. Everyone isn't working with the same chemistry, that's for sure. I mean, most of the food at the grocery store isn't real either. If we could poison ourselves less many of us would stop having so many responses to that too. In my mind, the "food" not really being nutritional anymore plays a big role. I have a lot of food sensitivities, if I ate things that upset my system, I would get fluffy QUICKLY. Some of us are just built strong too. I have broad shoulders and strong, thick legs. I can use that leg machine at the gym like it's nothing when my 21 year old can't do the weight I am doing and then walk outa there. I am a strong woman. I have heard this one MANY TIMES "oooh, baby, YOU THICK". So many times, as a matter of fact, that the last time the guy looked me up and down and he smiled slowly and started to open his mouth........."Oooohh,, guuurrrlll............you......" I said "Stop right there. Oh baby, you thick." And he started laughing......."How did you?........." "Come on man, get some better material." HAAAAAAhaha. We are all more than these bodies. That's for sure. May everyone have everything they need! It feels so good to hear you saying nice things about me :) I appreciate you. You are right, it is my delight.
It was such a delight to play with your images, Amy. It feels like a conversation between you, me and spirit--that may seem like deifying AI but everything's different when you bring love to it. And judgment (of people, not ideas) is the obstacle to love.
As I wrote in our chat regarding the 'beauty stupor' that your feast of sumptuous images can induce: "I'm especially pleased with my choices of placement for your art. It feels almost like preparing a multicourse meal, where it mixes them up in patterns of several, then one, then three that are similar, then a bunch where each one contrasts with the last. I think it made them hyperpalatable, a joke you'll get when you read it, for sustained consumption. In this case the synthetic AIness is being used for love, to open up people's eyes to different beauties. I'm really proud of it."
I showed Veronica your images and she loved them. She was happy I was doing this post and gave me permission to use her story. Curiously, she mentioned that she was sorry my mom went through life not feeling good about her body. I have some clothes my grandmother made for my mom as a young woman, and the waists wouldn't fit anyone over 6 yrs old. When she was pregnant with me, the doctors put her on diet pills because they thought she'd gained too much weight with my brother! She was zipping around vacuuming at 9 pm, high on speed. She was on Weight Watchers and I later found her Jane Fonda and Jack Lelanne videos. And this is a normal healthy petite woman who lived to be 96.
"Everyone isn't working with the same chemistry, that's for sure." Great statement! I think that's where I carried the most guilt--did I assume my body chemistry that wasn't as reactive to sugars? In fifth grade, Veronica agreed to do this 'Healthy Way' program with a strict eating regime and weekly weigh-ins. I'm cringing writing this, although the people were lovely and encouraging. I remember a school teacher who gave out candy rewards for right answers, and Veronica's embarrassment at telling her she couldn't have them. At the end of the month was Halloween and Veronica eased back in treats when she practiced piano. I remember noticing that her concentration would get a little more diffuse as she ate sugar. I'm choosing to believe we're all doing everything right, even myself, and this was useful later, although I still cringe.
It IS so hard when we're bombarded with impossible body ideals on one hand, and food designed to sabotage us on the other. And we're all running our own experiments with doctors deluded by fake 'science' and marketing scams.
Thick! I thought this morning that was one positive adjective I didn't suggest trying as a prompt. Now that I realize it's become a pick-up line, I'm glad ;-) Great story! But fluffy is my new favorite word. That's such an excellent descriptor. Veronica will love it.
Sending much appreciation, much love!
I barked laughter at your "equipment failure" comment on "dat booty pop". Pahahhaa
I love that, 'dat booty pop' ;-)
If you wanted, I think you should cross post this on your site, Amy. It's as much you as me. Do you know how to do that?
I have not looked into it. I will stick it under my hat and look into it. I am zooming at the speed of light this week. :) I am sure it’s not that hard to do, thanks for bringing it up.
Just to save you time, it's the three dots across from my title that gives a drop-down option to cross post. Just if you want to get out a quick post on your site with no work involved. But there are many in the original draft you've shared with me that should also have a coming-out party. I love having it as my private fishing pond but sharing is caring, and all good things come back around.
done
I see. Well I appreciate that. I don't really think in terms of subscribers so I am long in learning the ins and outs of these things. There is much more to be done than I have done. But I would share your Round Body post simply because it is so good. So, I shall. Let me sit on it for a minute though, because I may have more to add. I just got done towing my husbands A/C work truck out of a ditch with our truck. Haha. I am back up at 5am. May it be nice out. I am excited to get back to it! Thank you. I enjoy working with you. *curtsy....(I was gonna say booty pop, but I am not a botty pop kind of girl, I am more of a freestyler.) I like to keep it weird and original. Also, I love it when people dance in union, but I never do it. I always dance inbewteen them in zig zags, like they are all my backup. It goes over well at weddings.
I love that idea, of the zigs and zags ;-)
I'm soon driving up to my daughter's house, from whence we'll leave for Bellingham and Vancouver tomorrow. So my attention is sporadic too but it will be fun to see my post on your site! It will certainly give the message to others that stealing is welcome.
Sooo ... that Stravinsky thing - is just my own ear-quipment failure ... ?
How many readers do I have who comment regularly--a couple dozen? What are the odds of having three people, you, Mark and Amy, with this knowledge and facility of classical music? When my blog has nothing to do with that?
I'm taking this as a very good sign.
Depends on which Stravinsky. For me, the big three early ballets (Petrushka, Firebird, Spring) are yummy treats for the ear. The later neo-classical stuff, not so much.
I could not make up my mind which section I cacophonised with most …
• Mystic Circle of the Young Fat Girls
https://youtu.be/EkwqPJZe8ms?t=1272
(I particularly liked the syncopated Cough at 21:44)
• The Glorification of the Chosen Fat One
https://youtu.be/EkwqPJZe8ms?t=1448
Or
• Sacrificial Fat Dance
https://youtu.be/EkwqPJZe8ms?t=1807
😊
I am now going to give myself an ear toilet and raise your Rites with some Rachmaninoff Riffs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfDreatXYeU, Tchaikovsky Cherub-hums https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OPlK5HwFxcw and some Wagner Walkyries https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGU1P6lBW6Q
Such funny Stravinsky section titles! I do love those bits of the Rite that you pointed out. But yes, they are a bit dissonant.
But this is nothing new. Check out this Chopin Prelude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8C7hYSQd_c
Speaking of Rach, I adore his "Lilacs" solo piano arrangement, but every time I try to play it, it sounds terrible. Here's a beautiful performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaiAPSBRfdE
... which brings us full circle back to Amy ... :-)
https://bttrain.substack.com/p/rough-open-air-piano-moments-captured
Thanks again for mentioning Rachmaninoff. I've started working on "Lilacs" again and this time I think I can make progress, by working backwards from the end (i.e., harder to easier). I'm not crazy about all of his music, but this thing is special and obviously the work of a great genius.
Wow.
While beautiful, AI generated images typically use artists, photographers and other creatives' work without their consent. Their work is scraped from the Net, rendering them invisible and silencing their original voice. Despite the copyright inherent in original human generated works of art, artists are not acknowledged or compensated. (An artist in my community brought this to my attention. I imagine there are many others who aren't aware, including among those who generate the AI images.)
If the person who generates the AI art for your Stack has found a way to use only the work of creatives who have consented to this, please let me know. And by consented, I don't mean they've unwittingly agreed to the terms and conditions that accompany setting up a Facebook page.
Yes the same thing is being done with Substack content, it's written into the fine print that you can decline but also says they may do it anyway.
I have two questions: what's your goal and what's your strategy?
My goal is that all of us have agreeable ways to make a living so that we can give the best of ourselves for free, in all ways that are infinitely replicable. So if someone makes a physical object that can only live in one place, that should be paid. But if that can go everywhere at no additional cost, it should be freely given. Right now, most paid art is for advertising, which seems unsatisfying to both the artist and the public. here's my economic plan that talks about it: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/five-feminine-economies.
But more to the point, it doesn't matter what you or I think should be done. Our choice consists of looking at it, using it or boycotting it altogether. If you think that boycotting it will change it, that's what you should do. It's not my choice, however. This one speaks to that strategy: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/be-the-change-is-chump-change.
Yes, writers' work is also used this way and not just on Substack. It's unfortunate that creative human endeavours are being used without our consent to train our replacements. Once the AI is "skilled" enough in mimicry that it can fool the audience, writers and artists won't be needed ... even for advertising. That's sad as then there won't be much incentive to train or create at the professional level. I don't view AI developed art as creating art, in much the same way as using it to write an essay or story isn't creative.
I'm not sure that I agree that most paid art is being used for advertising, but I have no interest in trying to prove or disprove that right now.
I don't believe that art that can "go everywhere at no additional cost" should necessarily be freely given. That should be the creator's choice, as copyright laws state. If I buy an original painting, that doesn't give me the right to copy it and freely distribute the copies digitally just because they can go anywhere. And if I take a photo of it and publish it on Facebook, that shouldn't give Facebook the right to allow AI use of it, as it is still under copyright. That's in fact what we're talking about with some of the art AI uses to "create" its images. Not advertising pieces, but purloined art images. For one thing, we don't all have "agreeable ways to make a living" so that we can give the best of us away for free.
As I've just learned about this, I don't yet have a goal or a strategy. But I do know that I won't buy or use AI generated art. That's not a judgement on those who make a different choice. It's just a place to stand as a human being in a world that appears to want to make useless eaters out of the lot of us.
Thanks for taking the time to answer.
The most fundamental question, I believe, is whether life has a purpose or what happens is just random. If the latter, then all of the most dire predictions are just realistic.
I write about the time 20 yrs ago when I learned about the violence that goes into all the products that sustain my life. I was horrified and paralyzed. There was nothing I could buy without guilt. I spent over a decade engaging with fair trade organizations, educating my kids, supporting NGOs that fought back. I spent another decade writing my book that shows money itself is a unit of slave labor. That's what backs money and always has, making us complicit in the conquest of our neighbors.
My position now is that we didn't create the conditions we were born into and believing that individual consumer choices can change it is saying that we're more moral than all the people who've gone before us. They could have chosen differently but didn't. I think it's the system, not individual choices, that's crushing us.
Vegans are one form of moral purists, Amazon boycotters another. Someone victoriously showed recently that there were 7 of my books available at AbeBooks, mostly used. Now Amazon purists, who refuse to buy my book there, can get a used copy for only $5 more! Hooray! Of course I will make not a penny from that purchase but, hey, they can remain pure.
I really don't care. I now lose money on the ones I sell at the local bookshop because printing costs have risen. I only raise this point to illustrate that we can disempower ourselves and live very small lives in order to be 'innocent' or accept that our sacrifice does nothing to slow down the behemoth, and do what brings us joy and uses the position we've been born into to bring about meaning and change for all.
And yes, absolutely people don't have agreeable ways to make a living. Does anyone? That's the purpose of my economic plan. If that was available today, my entire book would be moot. And I do think what Amy does with AI is an art form. She's also a poet and her understanding of the medium and wording of prompts is not what I've seen anyone else do. She gives away her images and knowledge in how to use it and, like me, doesn't have paid subs. But I respect your choices too.
If life had no purpose, individual choices and free will wouldn't matter either. Then it would be just fine to live the easiest way possible, without concern for others... which is happening in our society precisely because people no longer see a purpose.
I get where you're coming from but believing we can change society by the choices we make is not necessarily saying we're more moral than previous generations. It's saying we know better than they did, often thanks to the independent media etc they didn't have access to. Thanks also to hindsight, experienced wisdom, time, exposure to more ideas and accurate information.
There's a middle ground between paralysis and giving up on the idea that individual choices matter. That's doing what we can. Buying meat from local food producers who treat animals well instead of factory farmed grocery store meat is one example that's not asking everyone to be vegan.
What I do doesn't have to change society. That's not why I do, or don't do, things. I do it because it's taking back power in a society that wants you to shut up and go along to get along.
It has nothing to do with moral superiority. I respect others' right to choose for themselves ... once their consent is informed consent. It has everything to do with not giving up. If individual choice doesn't matter, then individual human beings don't matter either. And if I can make a different choice, why wouldn't I?
Agreed. I suspect that I make many of the same consumer choices you do. I've just stopped telling other people what they should do. And I make the choices that bring me joy, which includes local animal husbandry and fair trade. For my daughters, press-on nails with rhinestone flames from China gets them through their slog of a job (citing the last purchase I saw come though the joint Amazon account.) I don't have any criticism of them. They're doing the best they can.
Amy's AI art brings me immense joy. It's also, in this article, being used to show round bodied women as beautiful, something that Amy had a hard time getting the algorithms to do. They're made to show wasp-waisted women with big pouchy lips and giraffe necks. I'm using AI art for the purpose of love--getting people to see others differently, and getting people to feel good about themselves. As you can see in some of the comments (including Amy and Gabe), this worked.
AI art is a powerful tool. It makes text more compelling. If people with good messages refuse to use it, so it's only used by people selling products or bad ideas, will that make AI art go away? I don't think so. I think it will just empower bad ideas.
We agree then that telling others what to do isn't the thing, nor is criticizing them. As long as people are informed so they can choose freely, I'm all for it.
All art can be powerful. But AI art is much less costly than hiring an artist to illustrate a point.
My comment wasn't an effort to get AI art to go away. Only to understand if you knew its source and the ramifications ... aka informed consent.
Thanks for the mature, polite exchange of ideas and for letting me take up space in your comment section. Enjoy your evening!
hola, tereza.
this is a lovely essay on the brutality of the human female on the human female. yikes! what a crazy world and i am filled with a kind of awe that her brutality became a wake up call for her to change out of the mob of a particular classification of deservedness that seems particularly pointed with women, perhaps especially young women.
and your comment about the food 'industry' and the kind of evil — my word, not yours — that has been made manifest within it from the psychology, emotionality and so-called health it is to provide. i've written extensively on my changed relationship to food as sacred medicine that became recognised when my muscle-intuitive process became the path into connecting with the divine joy / love that is foundation of life. gautama said it best 'trust your self'. that seems to be what your daughter was able to wake up to! an amazingly rare experience.
i've also written that a key cornerstone to obedience to authority began when agriculture separated those with control of the food with those who look to the controllers to be fed. your essay hints at that in a rather pernicious, eugenical way: the controllers of food create the energy of deserving and undeserving, perhaps even the root of that pernicious energy. and now the controllers of food and medicine exploit that as we see being made manifest in the many unconscious ways fat is equated with unconscious undeservedness and condescension. and with death protocols of obedience to the authorities of the many false dietary fads that promote ill health and deepens separation of self from soul using food and fat.
interesting topic with many ramifications that can be explored, including the nature of a deliberately hyper-activated devouring 'mother' energy looking to protect when, perhaps, protection is not the action. straight talk, as jeanie finlay argues. all those 'soft' words, and those kindly meant and hurtful splits between being x or beautiful. (another subtle bifurcation) grounded in that deserving/undeserving duality.)
so much here.
p.s.:
and i loved seeing laura mvula's video again.
I mean to credit you every time I show that Laura Mvula video. Veronica and I were dancing to it on fourth of July. I just love it and am always grateful you showed it to me!
I don't know where to go with the rest of your comment or the two on the Elizabeth Nickson piece. It seems like you're commenting on this one: https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/michael-tsarion-myth-of-the-terrible mother.
You would have to talk to Veronica about whether she felt I had "deliberately hyper-activated devouring mother energy looking to protect when, perhaps, protection is not the action." I don't think either she or I know what the right course of action would have been but I know she'd never refer to me as a devouring mother.
You cite that this is an eternal truth, evidenced by ancient drawings of vaginas with teeth and indigenous ceremonies pretending to 'kidnap' sons from mothers who don't want to give them up. You give Fiamengo's statistics that more mothers kill their children than fathers do. You list terrible mothers like Anneke Lucas' and Hilary Clinton and the queen of Belgium. You say women do terrible things like female circumcision. And you insist, these are not the exceptions but the rule: we are being killed by too much motherly caring, 'healthed to death'.
I did mention your comment to Veronica while we were dancing to Mvula. She wondered how the stats on women killing their children compare to the amount of time women spend caring for their children--are these accidents, with infants in particular being inherently fragile? Are these mothers who are overwhelmed and go temporarily insane? Is mothering such a hazardous, exhausting job demanding 24/7 eternal vigilance that it's a wonder any of us gets through it without going insane? Especially with no support from family and society.
You see my essay as about women's brutality against women. You see terrible mothers as the norm--the nature of mothers, not made by circumstances. You see me as a devouring mother when I'm looking to protect my child. You prefer 'straight talk' (telling people they're fat and ugly rather than 'You're not fat, you're beautiful'?) You see too much feminine influence as the problem in society, not patriarchal systems.
I don't agree.
interesting response!
i don't see too much 'devouring mother' energy as *the* problem. not any more than i see 'toxic masculinity' as *the* problem. and i didn't think or call you or even infer that you are/were a devouring mother. i've not thought that or said it. in fact i suspect that your daughter's ability to break free from her toxic relationship with devouring immature female energy was largely due to your strong feminine energy.
you are misreading my words; and completely negating my 'dogma' that singularity-ism is a toxic prelude to duality as poison.
what i am saying is that we have blinded ourselves (been blinded by fabian new age delusion) to the presence of a negative feminine energy that makes itself manifest in the same way that we blind ourselves that the only 'bad' thing in society is toxic patriarchy as manifested in church or corporate structures.
i don't see terrible mothers as the norm any more than i see terrible fathers as the norm. (i had both.) if both were the norm society would likely completely collapse. it is simply that we are in a very unbalanced state of glorifying the mother energy as the saviour if it were set free and vilifying the masculine energy as that which has killed life, especially the feminine.
i have come to believe that that is likely part of the psyop: imbalanced energies by undeserving the one and overdeserving the other. the destruction of the family is easily done when we blind ourselves to the humanity of both men and woman: men as the embodiment of patriarchal evil that deserves prison and debasement; women as the givers of life and succour who can do not wrong. both are incorrect. and both ideologies folded into one another allow for us to be psychologically manipulated into creating a deserving/underserving ideology that splits the sexds.
and that is what the woke energy of transhuminism non-sex craziness that requires sexual mutilation is all about.
and mixed in there is the creation through trauma of the narcissistic men and women who are truly destructive. it isn't just *men*. it isn't just *women*. we are facing a full on frontal assault on children by both in order to create enough schismogenetic trauma that will allow and condone men and women who will abuse the anneke lucas' and millions of other children.
does that clarify my thoughts on this?
We live in different realities, Guy. Nowhere is there the 'glorification of the mother energy as the savior if it were set free' except in my system design. What you call 'mother energy' is just propaganda used to serve investor profits. It has zero benefit to mothers. You've never heard me talk about "men as the embodiment of patriarchal evil that deserves prison and debasement." You're the one who talks about the other gender in insulting generalities, not me.
These are insecure middle school girls, not a "toxic relationship with devouring immature female energy." There's no devouring going on in the lunch room. I think that was Veronica's point. Lots of posing, no eating. The 'devouring female energy' was a girl insecure about her own weight whose own mother was dying of cancer at the time. I hear she's now a mother of two and has a flower stand, and is probably a perfectly nice person.
If there's a full frontal assault on children but mothers already have too much power, who do you expect to protect them? Everything that I do is to empower mothers, everything that you do pushes back against what you perceive as too much power. We're at cross purposes.
hola.
i see, i think, where you are coming from. and from what i see i don't actually think we are actually at cross *purposes*. we are at a crossed language barrier/conflict.
i am speaking of devouring mother energy as metaphorical description of the mother that wants to keep their children safe at the expense of their children's freedom and individuality. and somehow you have taken this language literally and as if i am citing it as a singular cause of social 'trouble'.
actually i don't really see this as separate from the 'toxic' patriarchal energy that wants to keep their power structure safe at the expense of individual freedom and individuality. both come from the same place. the one is the boot in the face (orwell), the other is the jab in the arm (convid).
describing teenage girls being brutally mean to each other as a kind of natural expression of pubescent insecurity and conflating my comment with food misses the essence of what is happening in a kind of rhetorical deflection. the use of pubescent confusion to induce self sexual mutilation with drugs and/or surgery, 'for your own health', is what kind of expressed energy? a system problem? if so, where did the energy of that 'system' get its genesis? something like 'this is for your own happiness'. hmmmmmm.
and actually you do kind of generalise about the toxic nature of the patriarchy as being that which has created the unhealthy systems which you write are the root of our societal problems. my discussion is to expand beyond a 'system', especially one (or ones) successful enough to guide the society goodly or badly, to include the role that unbalanced female psychological energy has in the creation and perpetuation of the systems you have solely ascribed, generally, to men. perhaps you have in earlier essays described the way that women help perpetuate harmful systems, and if so, please direct me to them. i would love to see your perspective on that to help me to understand better this amazing changing time we are living in.
as to protecting the children, your statement oddly excludes men as possible protectors. why? in a very 'general' kind of way family protection was once considered one of the key social (even mythological or archetypal) roles of men. it was not the role of the mother, whose primary role, in that old-fashioned world view(?), was of nurturing healthy children. in that mythological(?) world women didn't need to protect and nurture. your statement now infers that the mothers, only, can be (are?) the protectors of their children as well as being their nurturers. where does that leave men, speaking of broad generalities? the source of sperm only and after that that which provides the threat that mothers need to protect their children from? these are the ideologies that janice fiamengo (https://substack.com/@fiamengofile) and bettina arndt (https://substack.com/@bettinaarndt) write about as they have become manifest in imbalanced laws designed to be hurtful to men.
and that is, in many ways, exactly how the society has broken down. for example, boys in today's schools are being indoctrinated by a gynocentric ideology that men, especially white men, are the singular source of all that is bad in the world and the history of the world — violence, hurtful systems, colonisation, and genocides. (and that isn't really an exaggeration, from all that i've read about the woke state of the government constructed school systems.) as an powerful example of even that at the university level the north korean refugee yeonmi park described her disappointment with columbia university when when she discovered, while there, anti-male woke ideolgy was being imposed on her with things like being forced by coercive ideological pressure to dislike listening to the dead white men like bach and mozart because they were white men. further, she felt less free to speak her truth at columbia then she did while in north korea where she didn't know she didn't have the freedom to speak truthfully. if you are curious, jordan peterson actually cries over the death of this university with it having become a subtly coercive indoctrination system. 'Tyranny, Slavery and Columbia U | Yeonmi Park | EP 172.' https://youtu.be/8yqa-SdJtT4)
and, at the end of the day, my use of the very old phrase 'devouring mother' or if i were to use 'destructive father' — which is an absolute reality too! — is coming from a psychological perspective as descriptions of those energies that can be activated in people. and 'people' includes men and women that can and do hurts boys, girls, as well as other women and men.
i'm not saying all or even most woman are devouring, unlike how men have been *generally* vilified in the last 40 years or more, with such ideologies is that all men are potential rapists. what i am saying is that when these energies are not seen very well, they will allow us to mis-understand things like the (false) value of blaming others — oligarchs, systems, governments, schools — for the problems of life as we experience it. all of these 'systems' are the collective expression of people. and to the extent that the people within these systems are out of balance with the energies of life — masculine and feminine within men and women — the systems will be out of balance and our social structures more hurtful than supportive of the individuality of human creative expression.
i hope that clarifies my position by more sharply defining my use of the phrases you have found troublesome generalities.
There are two questions here: One, am I misunderstanding your meaning? Two, do we disagree? My position is that we fundamentally disagree at the level of my dogma, that people are inherently good and, when they behave badly, systems and stories are to blame.
This is what I'm choosing to believe and how I'm choosing to live my life, not something I'm willing to raise to question. Every disagreement I have with everyone is in defense of human nature being good and individuals behaving badly, not because they're inferior morally, but because of what's been done to them.
The systems of Western religion, philosophy, government, medicine, education, media, language, law and economics were indisputably designed by men and designed specifically to exclude women. The word patriarchy is redundant because the archons were men by definition. The system of hierarchy and competition only pertained to men, women didn't exist in it.
I criticize ideas, not people. The story of the devouring mother may be ancient but the phrase itself is a judgment. You define it as a "metaphorical description of the mother that wants to keep their children safe at the expense of their children's freedom and individuality." Every mother walks that line every day of her children's lives.
I erred, if I did, on the side of more freedom and individuality. Veronica was just pointing out that it's the close calls that still cause me trauma. I had just talked to her about doing a sage ritual to let go of the dozen times my lack of 100% vigilance could have resulted in one of them being disappeared forever, killed or permanently maimed. Although my husband was there or the only one there for most of them, it would have been myself I could never have forgiven.
I can't even write that without feeling sick. Had any of those resulted in what could have happened, I could never have this conversation with you neutrally, blaming mothers for being overprotective, which you call devouring.
From what you've said, Guy, you were subjected to an extreme form of trauma and abuse. Your mother, who you won't call your mother even after her death, behaved terribly to you. Why did she do this? What happened to her to cause her to act that way towards the people who loved her the most?
From what I've read, you see this as who she was, not how she behaved. You blame her and don't see her as a victim. You continue to 'punish' her by withholding your love even after her death. I define love and forgiveness as giving someone the benefit of the doubt that what they do is for a reason, that seems to them like the best choice available at the time.
I'm not the right person or place to address that but it's where our dogmas diverge. All people can't be innocent if your mother is guilty. From that point on, it's a matter of judging who's more guilty, making others more innocent. And anyone I argue is innocent, including mothers who overprotect or kill their children, must make others guilty, like men.
Your mother failed to protect you and your sisters. She wasn't overprotective. Insurances aren't paying doctors $80K for vaccinating patients because they care too much about our safety to give us individual choice and freedom. They exploit our desire to protect but the only people fighting back are the ones going to great lengths to protect their children.
If you're not willing to entertain the possibility that all people, including your mother, are inherently good if our systems and stories supported that, we disagree at the level of dogma. And as Laura Mvula says, That's alright. We don't need to agree but it's not that I'm misunderstanding you.
again, i don't disagree with you. i do believe that all people are born inherently good and that the systems we have, designed by the archons (men or aliens?) are the mechanism of the schismogenetic nature of our society that creates the energy of deserving and undeserving that allows for the moral justification of killing by both traumatised men and traumatised women. fortunately the system is perfect and many, perhaps even most people, men and women, aren't completely destructively traumatised to the point satanic and/or eugenical ideology.
where we perhaps disagree is that you 'blame' the system(s) as the primary source of 'the' problem(s) and i argue that the system(s) continue because the traumatised men and women within them perpetuate the schismogenetic / traumatising system(s). it is inherently wrong to exclude half of humanity from the success of the traumatising system(s) and to blame solely the archons (men?) for having created those systems.
oh! and i infer that my writing about my exploration of my relationship with terry, my mother, has not explicitly made clear that i actually do forgive my her for being human and traumatised. i do see her as a victim of trauma, likely familial male sexual assault perhaps with the collusion, consciously or not, of her mother. and likely she carried ancestral trauma through the unconscious processes that traumatised people have of transmitting trauma into their children. her parents were also victims of a system(s) trauma that had been perpetuated by the traumatised women and men who lived it before them. also my mother was, imo, a victim of the bizarre religious mind control crap of her mother's twist on christianity that was later compounded by new age delusion - also a system of course, created by the mk-ultra system by all likelihood.
i also see my father as victim of trauma and the systems of trauma, very specifically in his case the active debasement of men in the multitude of ways that were and are being done. that was predated and compounded what his childhood experience was with having been raised by a mother who was in and out of insane asylums during his childhood. that was then compounded by serving as an 18 year old soldier in korea. that particular trauma had his body physically jump up from the bed, with a horrified gasp of air, an inch or two from the surface whenever he was touched or spoken to when waking him from sleep. he was still doing that at the age of 50 when my parents separated.
we humans create and are created by our systems: language, categorisations, ostensible priorities and unconscious beliefs. as we humans evolve enough to take personal responsibility for our shadow, our belief systems, that responsibility will automatically change the systems that have created us and that we are concomitantly, unconsciously, creating. very challenging process that involves how both men and women, as energies of creative and nurturing, building and maintaining, use them for 'good' or for 'bad.'
as gautama and other wise people of both genders have said, until we see with clarity, change is difficult. how do we know we are or not seeing clearly? hmmmmm. that is a real question that gets answered in the loving or hurtful natures of our social structures and/or systems.
i appreciate your passion and stance. you are helping me see more clearly my own ideas and how the society is structured around the collective ideas, ideals and ideologies of our time as structured from past forms of beliefs and truths. all the best with what is changing. everything changes.