Currently reading Jerusalem: A Biography by Simon Sebag Montefiore. Excellent book, btw, I highly recommend it.
Once again I am bowled over by the widely accepted narrative that Jews are colonisers and Israel has no historical right to the land in the Levant and the Arab Muslims are, in fact, the indigenous people, when even the slightest understanding of history on the most elemental, basic level shows that narrative as patently ludicrous.
I can only conclude that people pushing this narrative either has a problem with decolonisation and land back as a concept, or with Jews, specifically.
Don't forget that a lot of it is being deliberately and maliciously pushed by Pan-Arabist interests; their failure to keep the Jews as dhimmis was a massive blow to their collective pride and ego. It's their equivalent of the American South's "Lost Cause".
ideologies exist before we have official names for them
but the naming implies observation, and the construction of identity
so can we look at ideologies which existed before the construction of their political identity, and label them as being within that identity group?-or does the practice of naming and constructing an identity, inherently separate the individuals and groups which purported those ideas prior to the construction of the ideological grouping from those who purport said ideas after the creation of the construct?
this is specifically intellectual history and the history of ideas. and its Absolutely a line all of us struggle with when researching. while there isnt a Very Short Introduction to this specific topic, there IS a Very Short Introduction To American Intellectual History by OUP that would probably have some clear thoughts about the issue.
I am reccing that book over any other because a) you aint got time for further and b) you just need an overview.
in my own research i had to have a really clear working definition of my term, and looked for examples of it prior to its use. because mine was less about identity, although there was a person-focussed term as well, your specific concern was not mine. whether or not someone like Francesco Geminiani considered himself a virtuoso (or others thought him one) has little to do with whether or not he engaged with virtuosity (he did, in that he censured it; that is, a highly flashy audience-seeking performance practice).
but this shit i find So Hard to detail in my brain. its like catching the wind to understand the shape of the problem.
Ah yes that's what it is! I tend to not fuck with intellectual history much because it gives me flashbacks to PhilosophyBros mansplaining the Prison Notebooks at me while a smug fuck across the room explains that people only care about the Holocaust because it happened to "White People."
Grad school memories.
Thank you for this response! I'll refamiliarize myself with the field with the VSI.
Consider following political and social justice tumblrs under a different login than the one you use to find cool art / cat pictures / fandom stuff / kink stuff / etc
Or like just in general, if you're getting most of your political news in the same apps where you do most of your fun / sexy shit,
pls give some thought to where and when those streams get crossed, esp if you haven't really thought about it before
For some people it doesn't matter much, but for some people it does.
There's a concept in psychology called "overcoupling," which is basically when a person's trauma is super cross-wired, so to speak, with the present or with a certain topic
Overcoupling can both cause and worsen intrusive thoughts and depression, especially for people with a history of trauma
Or, more simply: If you're mentally whipping back and forth between cute animal, funny joke, porn, genocide psa, and hate crime footage at the speed of scrolling, that can really mess with your head, and sometimes it takes people quite a while to pin it down
Or, if the place you go to relax and look at fandom shit is also where you get all your news about ongoing global crises, that's gonna seriously mess with your ability to actually relax and rest
That sort of thing, if that makes sense. It's not "Don't do this or else!!" It's just kind of a "hey make sure you didn't accidentally frogboil your stress responses or something"
#craaaaaaap. #fuck. #fuuuuuuuck. #i gotta do smth about that. # thank you twin # but WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH #CHANGING ACCOUNTS IS SUPER HAAARD WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH #how do I know if this shit is even messing with me anyway #how did YOU know this shit was messing with people #what book did you get your strange eldritch knowledge from???
Oh! So funny story but I actually edit psychology books for a living lol
So, many books, but the knowledge isn't eldritch - it's evidence-based!
Also, before I go into it:
This isn't something anyone needs to stress over or especially panic over, especially if you don't really feel like it's affecting you personally.
I simply was having a thoughtful night and wanted to share a nudge/tip/data point to help people be more intentional
Best of luck!
But yes, further explanation!:
The concept of overcoupling specifically comes from Somatic Experiencing, which is a type of therapy and bodywork. It was invented by a psychologist and trauma survivor, Dr. Peter Levine, in the 1990s. The idea behind Somatic Experiencing, as well as other somatic ("body-based") healing practices, is that, as we know, trauma is stored not just in the mind, but also in the body - and therefore SE says, in order to heal after trauma, we must work with the body too. They have some really cool articles and theses on the org's Research page here
But the reason I know isn't specific to somatic experiencing itself, I just know a lot about trauma, psychology books, and "mind, body, spirit" publishing (kind of a genre tag for a lot of these books, especially for alternative and non-Western healing practices).
Sooooooo,
If you want specific book recs for the eldritch-evidence-based knowledge, I highly recommend:
What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
by Stephanie Foo
and
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
by Peter Levine
Also major publishers in psychology and healing that I really like and respect:
New Harbinger Publications (huge leader and force in evidence-based psychology publishing)
North Atlantic Books (Peter Levine's publisher, they have a lot of really awesome and innovative books, and are the main publisher for somatic experiencing) (Ironically, they're on the Mid-Pacific Coast tho lol)
(Note since I've been asked before: This is in no way an ad or an affiliate link. I have never used either of those on reasonsforhope/directactionforhope, and I never plan to bc I believe in eliminating perverse incentives in my activism, etc. I do trust both those publishers bc I've personally worked with them, but they're in no way paying me to say this (or paying me rn in general; I'm on medical leave / sabbatical); I chose to work with them because I really like and respect them and their books.)
--
On a different type of note, in terms of how I figured it out:
I figured it out because it messed with me a lot when I was in college. And I was in college during the start of the Black Lives Matter movement and the first Trump presidency - there were a LOT of horrifying things on social media.
I'd go on tumblr, or facebook, to relax and see some cute animal pictures - and then I'd end up seeing them sandwiched between genocide PSAs, and every new #MeToo announcement, and videos of unarmed Black people being murdered
It did, indeed, lowkey frogboiled my stress responses, which I noticed bc every time I ended up going on tumblr, I ended up feeling way worse than I started. And it was specifically messing with my sleep a lot bc I'd be scrolling before bed, as we all do, and then - BOOM ! DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THIS HORRIFIC WAR CRIME?
like every 3 posts
and I was actually in a city with that was targeted by a lot of right-wing extremists, so there wasn't like, a lot of space between "horrifying news shit" and "my life" and things like "is it safe to walk to the store right now?"
It wasn't great for me!! I ended up quitting tumblr for like 6 years, until the COVID pandemic started and I was hella bored in lockdown, and in all that time I continued to be glad I left tumblr. Honestly, if I didn't run reasonsforhope on here, I would've deleted my account on here again a couple years ago lol
I will say tumblr is actually in many ways far MORE chill about politics and social justice than it used to be. But that's because the bar was subterranean!!!!
But yeah, at the time, what I did was start by filtering things a lot better and blocking tags and using social media less.
It helped, but ultimately I decided I just didn't want to deal with any of that shit anymore. So I quit tumblr for years, and I deleted Facebook off my phone and just kept Messenger (this was like 2016; young ppl still used facebook), and it helped my mental health a lot
So I went "Great, awesome, clearly that worked, keep it up." And now I periodically just reassess to make sure that I engage with politics and triggering shit in a more intentional way
So, if you want to check if it's messing with you, you could try things like:
making a new account for a few days, and curating a new dashboard, and see how using that feels / start there
take a break from tumblr or switch to like exclusively social media playlists of cat videos for a few days, and see how that feels
filter a bunch of tags or unfollow a couple blogs for a week or two, and see if that makes a difference
take a few days to make a conscious effort to use different social media for fun than you do for serious shit / news / triggering shit. see if that feels like it's worth exploring more
And, psa just in general. Not because I think people can't take care of themselves or can't make their own decisions, but because sometimes these things really can frogboil you before you realize:
If you see a post that makes you spiral or triggers you, please take at least one step to make sure you won't see the post again
e.g., block the tag, filter a term, unfollow the blog that posted it, click "no interest in this post" on the dropdown. you can also go to tumblr settings and tell it to show you fewer posts from people you don't follow and communities you're not in, which can help a lot, esp since posts with a lot of engagement are often more controversial or upsetting
Anyway, yeah - this isn't something to panic over, especially if you don't think it's affecting you just a data point to help people be more intentional
Years before the covid pandemic began, author Naomi Kritzer wrote the charming, emotionally genuine short story "So Much Cooking," which was a pandemic log through the eyes of a cooking blog. The premise is that the author is a home cooking blogger raising her kids, and then a pandemic hits--and bit by bit she's feeding not only her own, but her sister's kids, some neighbors' kids, and so on, in a situation of pandemic lockdown and food shortages.
It's very good, and was prescient for a lot of the early days of the covid pandemic. I found myself returning to it often in the first couple of years because of how steadfast it was in its hopefulness.
Last year she wrote a novelette, "The Year Without Sunshine," which attacks a similar problem in a similar way; instead of pandemic, this one is about the aftereffects of a distant nuke or a massive volcano explosion (it doesn't say), which has churned a great deal of dust into the air, causing massive damage to society and agriculture. The story covers one neighborhood, pulling together to keep each other alive--not through violence, but through lawn potatoes and message pinboards and bicycle-powered oxygen concentrators.
I recommend both stories. They're uplifting in a way that a lot of what I see lately isn't. They're a bit of a panacea for constant fearmongering about intracommunity violence and grinding hatefulness. We can be good to each other, if we try.
“The Kent State shootings (also known as the May 4 massacre or the Kent State massacre)[3][4][5] were the shootings on May 4, 1970 of unarmed college students by members of the Ohio National Guard at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio during a mass protest against the bombing of Cambodia by United States military forces. Twenty-eight guardsmen fired approximately 67 rounds over a period of 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine others, one of whom suffered permanent paralysis.[6][7]”
“There was a significant national response to the shootings: hundreds of universities, colleges, and high schools closed throughout the United States due to a student strike of 4 million students,[10] and the event further affected public opinion, at an already socially contentious time, over the role of the United States in the Vietnam War.[11]”
Student strike of 4 million students! Let’s do that again lol
But it was not just Kent State, eleven days later Mississippi Police fired 150 rounds into a dormitory at Jackson State College, killing 2 and wounding 15 black protesters.
This was taught in schools. This was taught in every high school. This is basic curriculum in public schools.
There is no conspiracy to hide the truth of Kent state. You were just drawing Naruto or a stussy some shit.
“THE AMERIKKKANS WONT TEACH YOU ABOUT A PIVOTAL FUCKUP OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT WHERE THE NATIONAL GUARD SHOT STUDENTS, I, A EURO KNOW MORE THAN YOU ABOUT YOUR OWN BAD COUNTRY. DON’T LOOK UNDER OUR FLOORBOARDS.”
It is in textbooks, It is discussed right alongside Nixon, Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement and protesting generally.
This is “Beto O'Rourke goes to Kent State to promote more civilian gun control when the people who opened fire were the National fucking Guard levels of conspiratorial historical and educational illiteracy.
(Yes. He fucking did that. He is that stupid. And so is this entire discussion.)
“Bla bla state sponsored propaganda bla bla. THEYYYYYYYYYYYY don’t want you to KNOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW” everybody knows.
Everybody. It’s just history, like the MOVE bombing or the Black Panther protest at the California Capitol building.
And you all decided to amplify an aesthetic posting account that likes Killdozer guy
and posts weird shit like this
Because you couldn’t work out that the OP was hitting it from a conspiratorial and pro-gun perspective because, again, you refuse to fucking read or pay attention.
“The US government is trying to suppress info about Kent State!”
Here’s a whole fucking graphic novel you can get that looks at the shooting from several days before it happened and explains the tensions and terrible choices BY THE GOVERNMENT AT ALL LEVELS. I am linking it from Amazon because YOU CAN BUY IT ON AMAZON.
I have actually never managed to finish it because I get up to the day of and can’t handle knowing what’s coming. Because Backderf does an amazing job showing how it all slowly went to shit, and it fucking hurts.
We learned about it. It is talked about. Do five fucking seconds of research before deciding you just want to agree with someone because you want to hate the US more than you want to actually learn shit.
when the subject of "why do people believe things that are seriously wrong and harmful" comes up it feels like you kinda hear one of two perspectives:
"oh, that's easy! it's because they're fundamentally Bad people who want to hurt others and choose their beliefs to justify that! :) hope this helps"
or
"they just don't have access to the same information we do. look at this person who was raised in a cult! don't you feel sorry for her?"
and like, yes, fine, some people were in fact raised in cults, but what i wish people would understand is that the bulk of it is just normal human flaws, like:
they want to believe stuff that makes them feel smart and cool and like they've figured everything out (you also do this)
they want to believe stuff that makes them feel like their emotions are justified and grounded in reality, and that the people they want to hurt deserve to be hurt (you also do this)
they form conclusions before they've processed all the relevant information, and cling to that first impression even when new info comes to light (you also do this)
they pick up beliefs from the people around them because they want to be liked and fit in, not because the beliefs are good or true (you also do this)
they come up with reasons that the stuff that benefits them (and the people they like and identify with) is actually overwhelmingly best for everyone and obviously the right thing to do (you also do this)
they pay more attention to stuff that supports what they already believe and avoid looking in places that might show them otherwise (you also do this)
they listen to people who talk like 'one of them' and ignore others (you also do this)
they come up with reasons to dismiss people with conflicting viewpoints as obviously in bad faith or ignorant or a shill or evil (you also do this)
they fail to take their own beliefs seriously sometimes, and take their beliefs way too seriously other times, in a selective way that lets them do the things they already wanted to do (you also do this)
the very ways they construct the ideas of 'knowledge' and 'wisdom' and 'belief' and 'understanding' are biased so that what they don't want to believe comes under lots of scrutiny and what they do want to believe receives less (you also do this)
you, dear reader, are presumably right about everything and were correct to die on every hill you've ever died on, but the difference between you and someone who's wrong about important stuff doesn't look like "well they're inherently evil and i'm not", it probably looks like a combination of:
natural environment (they would have been exposed to different information than you regardless of their choices)
being in the right place at the right time (your particular profile of flaws and virtues happened to be what was needed to lead you to the right conclusions, they had the opposite experience)
random luck (you doubled down on what felt right to believe but wasn't, but it turned out to be inconsequential, or even right for different reasons, while they doubled down on what turned out to be a horrible mistake distorting their entire worldview)
you do less of the things in the previous list, and over time the difference between you and them adds up
and, look, i also do these things. the nicest and most thoughtful people i've ever met do these things. if you meet someone who never does any of these things, i dunno, give them a fucking medal or something.
i know you're doing your best. we're all doing our best.
People in the notes being like "these are weaknesses of neurotypical people; my autism means I don't have these flaws": yes you do, and this post is about you specifically. People who believe that they're somehow magically immune to cognitive biases are the ones who tend to fall victim to them the hardest.
"I think in some ways every single person, human, vampire, whatever, has a choice to make: to be full of rage about what happens to you or to reconcile with it, to strive for the most honorable existence you can despite the odds." - Kitty, Kitty And The Midnight Hour by Carrie Vaughn
Here's a book about Chinese history that is banned in mainland China because it's not nice enough about the millions of peopled the communist government murdered through intentional starvation:
This is my very long archive of Jewish titles, collected according to what I find personally interesting, and so the authors here span many denominations/viewpoints. If you come across this as a reblog, check in on the original post to see if I have made any updates or corrections. As a general disclaimer, Judaism is a closed religion (yes, including Lilith) and so the books I have recommended on Kabbalah and mysticism are not for goyische readers, thank you for understanding.
TEXTS (Torah/Tanakh, Talmud, Midrash, etc.)
"After the Apple: Women in the Bible" — Naomi Rosenblatt
"Beginnings: Reflections on the Bible’s Intriguing 'Firsts'" — Meir Shalev
"Biblical Seductions: Six Stories Retold Based on Talmud and Midrash" — Sandra Rapoport
"But Where Is the Lamb?: Imagining the Story of Abraham and Isaac" — James Goodman
"Covenant & Conversation: Genesis" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
"Covenant & Conversation: Exodus" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
"Covenant & Conversation: Leviticus" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
"Covenant & Conversation: Numbers" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
"Covenant & Conversation: Deuteronomy" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
"Elijah and the Rabbis: Story and Theology" — Kristen Lindbeck
"Essays on Ethics: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
"Eternally Eve: Images of Eve in the Hebrew Bible, Midrash, and Modern Jewish Poetry" — Anne Lerner
"From Gods to G-d: How the Bible Debunked, Suppressed, or Changed Ancient Myths and Legends" — Avigdor Shinan & Yair Zakovitch
"Gleanings: Reflections on Ruth" — Stuart Halpern
"In Scripture: The First Stories of Jewish Sexual Identities" — Lori Lefkovitz
"It Takes Two to Torah: An Orthodox Rabbi and Reform Journalist Discuss and Debate Their Way Through the Five Books of Moses" — Abigail Pogrebin & Dov Linzer
"Jewish Biblical Interpretation and Cultural Exchange: Comparative Exegesis in Context" — Natalie Dohrmann & David Stern
"Justice for All: How the Jewish Bible Revolutionized Ethics" — Jeremiah Unterman
"Lessons in Leadership: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible" — Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
im just so happy i live in a time period where actual meaningful biological transition is possible. even if we lose rights or the ability to exist in public, nothing can turn back the clock on that, and just by having any sort of access to that our lives are made immensely better. millions of our sisters throughout history would never have dreamed of a day where they could have what HRT does for us.
please don't lose the plot of this. if you're a trans person on HRT you're a living miracle, the dream of hundreds of millions of your ancestors. your lives are all deeply meaningful no matter what anyone says.
Cursed be the one who announced to my father:
“It’s a boy!"...
...How could he twist the course of the stars so much?
How could he have erred so in his astrology?
A lying tongue, a fool’s mouth it had given him
For he foolishly transformed justice to poison
He altered the law and transposed the lines
Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead – a worthy woman...
...I would say "how lucky am I"
Father in heaven
who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water...
...Who would then transform me from a man to woman?
Were I only to have merited this being so graced by goodness...
What shall I say?
why cry or be bitter?
If my father in heaven has decreed upon me
and has maimed me with an immutable deformity
then I do not wish to remove it.
the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure
and for which no comfort can be found.
So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground.
Since I have learned from our tradition
that we bless both, the good and the bitter
I will bless in a voice hushed and weak:
blessed are you [HaShem] who has not made me a woman.
guys im so sorry but this dude is a satirist and this poem is surrounded by other pieces of satire. as a trans jew, not good rep at all and it feels reductive to pretend that it is
note that these excerpts conveniently leave out rhe parts where he jokes about how women have life on easy mode and spend their days laying on the floor tasting one dish after another. this poem is looking down on women and complaining about how many mitzvot men are beholden to
I'm just a rando on the internet trying to figure out which other randos on the internet to trust because I don't know much about the relevant culture & history, but having read through the full poem and skimmed some of the analysis, I'm inclined to side with the take that this is a cis man doing satire, not a historical trans woman. If this person was trans, they were hiding it behind satire, not venting their true feelings in this piece in a straightforward way.
in this very book kalonymus ben kalonymus has a long discussion about how you shouldnt trust anyone who drinks water, and that wine is the key to studying the torah. the opening of the book is extremely clearly stating that this book is about the hypocrisy of jewish law and jews and each story within is extremely obvious about that fact
it's not a personal failing to not be well-versed in קלונימוס בן קלונימוס or אבן בחן because sadly it is a topic that is as yet extremely understudied. there's not even a definitive set of dictionaries to help one parse through medieval hebrew*, and only a select few scholars are working through the extensive medieval jewish philosophical literature to try to help fill that gap
that being said, it does not give you the right to simply take one bad translation of one poem out of context (and boy is this poem heavy in context, kalonymus was a fucking master of intertextuality) and plaster your modern understandings of sex and gender on something intended to be satirical and then accuse a queer scholar of this very topic of erasing its own history just because it knows more than you
somebody asked me why i care about this spreading of disinformation and my answer is this: by spreading lies about queer jewish history, you are making it harder to discuss actual real queer jewish history. additionally, you're participating in the whitewashing of an already criminally under-discussed figure just because you like your made up version of his history better than the actual reality
*it's not nearly as intuitive as youd think. for example, עולם usually meant "time" and to study סלם יעקב meant to study (aristotelian) philosophy and the sciences. there was heavy influence from a variety of genres and regions, like arab adabs and italian proto-pickup artistry (i wish i was joking LMAO look up מגילת החשק של עמנואל הרומי and dante's vita nuova it's crazy. theres a nun)
———
if you are curious about how to discuss queer history without reneging on the whole "sex and gender are social constructs" thing, i recommend the following:
michel foucault - history of sexuality vol. 1
catherine chin - "marvelous things heard: on finding historical radiance"
max k. strassfeld - trans talmud: androgynes and eunuchs in rabbinic literature
after youve shored up your methodology, i recommend the following discussing kalonymus, his writings, and his legacy. it is important to note that the first two publications both have serious lapses in their methodologies including convenient omissions, misleading translations, and a lack of work done in the methodology discussed above
j. chotzner - "kalonymos ben kalonymos, a thirteenth-century satirist"
tova rosen - "circumcised cinderella: the fantasies of a fourteenth-century jewish author"
roni cohen - carnival and canon: medieval parodies for purim (doctoral thesis)
yehuda halper - "aristotelian philosophical programs in the middle ages" (possibly forthcoming)
Ok, so in The Book of Job, Rabbi Kushner alludes to a Holocaust memoir titled after the "Earth, do not cover my blood" verse in Job but I can't seem to find any references to an existing book over google, duckduckgo, goodreads or the storygraph. I suspect it's a book that's either changed its title over the years, or a book that just never got popular. Possibly a book in Hebrew? If anyone knows the book Rabbi Kushner is alluding to, please drop me a line!
Picked this one up on a whim. Honestly, I hope the genre of "fictional true crime" takes off, this one was overall pretty solid and did some interesting things with narrative and point of view. The tumblr speak was very accurate.
The most blatant inaccuracies to my mind is that in 2016 Discord was mostly used by gamers, fandom servers didn't really become a thing until around 2018 but I could be off on that timeline.
It's also extremely jarring to list some books that explore "the fall out of the Holocaust" and then not have a single book about Jews (yknow, the actual target of the Holocaust) in that list. the inclusion of "the Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" in that exact list, however, made it pretty clear that this wasn't an oversight, especially when Nazis being racist is mentioned a fair amount while antisemitism, the literal bedrock of Nazi ideology, isn't mentioned once. That's what I get for reading a Tumblr book.
“It’s always impressed me that Judaism mandates that goodbyes be said with a certain amount of hope. We end Shabbat with havdalah, a beautiful ceremony concluded by extinguishing a twisted candle in sweet wine and singing a song asking for a week of peace and a time of redemption for humankind. Seders end with the promise ‘Next year in Jerusalem’. On Simchat Torah, we conclude the reading of the Torah by rolling back to its beginning. Funerals end with Kaddish, a prayer not about death but about the generous gift of life and God’s goodness. At the completion of shiva, the rabbi often takes the mourners out of their homes for a brief stroll that enacts literally what is meant symbolically – walking them back into life. Somehow Jews trust that every ending is also a beginning, that the broken hearted will again feel loved, and the sun will rise no matter how long or dark the night.”
— Rabbi Steven Z Leder
(via ma3ayan)
reading blog @gatehouselibrary - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
