#book response

[thehyperspacesystem]

[This post is a response to the book Anxiety Generation by Jonathon Haidt, the first paragraphs summarize the essential thesis of the book in my own words, followed by my response which is seperated from the summary by a '-' (AI was NOT used to write this summary and as such it probably contains very human errors, omissions and misunderstandings.). We know that this alter's point of view contradicts previously posted points of view on this issue. Welcome to systemhood] Older generations should be proud of themselves for fucking up the brain development of 3 generations of children /sarcasm

It happened in two phases:

FIrst, childreen and teenagers access to the real world was taken away. Malls banned loitering, parents stopped allowing their children to play outside unsupervised, playgrounds became too safe (children need some risk of non-serious injury from play for their brains to develop properly). Towns became structured so that everything that teenagers wanted to do together in the real world required a car. Parents wouldn't allow teens to borrow the car. Parents imposed an excessive amount of structured activities on children taking away time for free play with other children. Hellcopter parenting become common, harming the development of independence and resilence. Parents no longer knew their neighbours and feared every adult was a potential child sexual abuser. Going out anywhere now costs an unaffordable amount of money, even for adults. Essentially teens were stuck at home with nothing to do fucking do and were not allowed to do anything.

Then, on the backdrop of this tweens and teens were given unrestricted access to the internet. Of course teens would disappear into the virtual world when there is nothing to fucking do in the real world. Teenagers social lives were lived online instead of in face to face interactions, because there was nowhere in the real world to physically go and hang out. In turns out that your brain actually needs a certain amount of face to face interactions with kids your own age away from adult supervision in your teen years to develop properly. Instant messages with emojis replacing face to face conversations doesn't train the same nueral networks as face to face interactions. Regular video calls with friends are a bit better, teenagers do get some developmental benefit from this, but it's still not as good as actually being in the same place. You can seen an amplified version of the effects of this in those who were teenagers during the COVID lockdowns, these teens development was harmed by the loss of face to face interactions at school.

- If I think back to my own teen years: * I lived on an island with a population of about 7,000 * there was a regular ferry to the city, but I wasn't allowed to go over there * There was nothing to do, no places for teenagers to hang out whatsoever * If you could get away from your parents supervision, and you could get it I guess you could smoke weed which alleviated the boredom somewhat. * I was over protected (while ironically also being abused). I had to tell my parents where I was going when I left the house and I was often told that I couldn't go out when my reasons for going out were perfectly reasonable (eg visiting a friend). * I was not allowed to interact with any other adults other than teachers at school because I was told every adult might be a "kiddie fidler". I missed opportunities to be mentored in my interests by knowlegable adults because of this. * I was discouraged from having friends in real life and friendships I did manage to make were actively sabotaged by my abusive mother * I was forbidden to have a boyfriend/girlfriend "as it would be a distraction from my education" * I was forbidden to have an after school job "as it would be a distraction from my education" On the backdrop of this, I was on the computer every waking moment that I wasn't at school (it was 1999, so there were no smartphones yet - i didn't even have a cell phone). There was nothing to do but surf the internet, play video games, go on shady IRC chat rooms and practise the gutair. I had seen hardcore porn by the time i was 13. I wasn't interested in it though, I (as an individual alter who was host in those days) may have been asexual. I distinctly remember that when my friend group all got dial up internet we didn't talk on the (landline) phone any more. We instant messaged instead of calling and I found the transition traumatic. My friends did not care enough to make time to actually talk to me any more. What was going on? It didn't matter anyway, as when I came out as trans my friend group would abandon me. The following year I got a laptop (I had previously been using a 2nd hand desktop computer), now wifi had not yet been invented yet and mobile data was not something a teenager could have. My laptop didn't even have a wifi card. But I took the laptop to school with me every day. I did sometimes use it for school work. My marks in English dramatically increased, but my marks in all other subjects plummeted. At lunch time I would sit outside an play video games on the laptop or type short stories. Everyone at school hated me anyway, so there was no point in trying to interact with anyone Now as an autistic adult, I have a lot of trouble with new social environements. I don't know how to engage with people. I don't know how to approach someone in a social setting and start a conversation (note: some other alters can do this to a limited degree). I have trouble carrying on a conversation. I basically have no idea how to function in the offline social world. I know this is complicated by the fact that I am a DID system and other alters may hold these skills. But I still think that if I had had a real world social environment to make friends and do things with other kids (and free of rampant transphobia) as a teenager, I would have much better social skills. Then again maybe this is just the effects of child abuse on my brain and the internet had nothing to do with it?

I disagree with the author of Anxiety Generation in that I don't think banning smartphones for kids is workable while adults are still addicted to them. If your parents are constantly on their phones and ignoring you because of their own TikTok addiction or whatever they're doing, that will still harm your development. I also think it nessecary to create vibrant real world spaces for teens to hang out in that don't cost money and don't need a car before even thinking about what guardrails should exist in the virtual world.

[flutterby-thoughts]

I have just started reading The Conscious Parent by Shefali Tsabary, PhD. It was recommended by my child’s therapist. It has an extremely Eastern philosophical bent so far (as of Chapter 1 that is), but I think that can work for me.

The first chapter is very much about how we need to rethink our parenting philosophy -- that it should not be a hierarchical dictatorship where we mold the child into a person, but that it should be a partnership where we recognize the person our child already is: their spirit or soul or unique spark. 

“As a parent, to the degree you are able to recognize that your children are in your life to foster a renewed sense of who you are, you will discover their potential to lead you to the discovery of your own true being.”

As I was reading that, I was struck with the idea that it’s that renewed sense of self that we fight against so desperately. I think she spoke of it a page or so earlier, but that is where it coalesced for me. We see ourselves so clearly; sometimes when our children act as mirrors, sometimes when their reactions illuminate our thoughts and behaviors. And it’s not always comfortable, even if it is a positive image. Because it might not be the image we’ve cultivated, we’ve convinced ourselves that we truly are.

I spent most of my life basing my entire personality on whoever I was around at the time. I believe most of us do that to some extent, allow certain traits out more with one group, suppress something else a little with family, etc... But I think that I did it to a more extreme point than many. I truly had no sense of self when I was alone, nothing I liked or disliked on my own. And the conflict between who I was at school, or with friends, or with family was devastating.

It got worse once I became a mother, because that is one role that it is terrifyingly hard to walk away from (at least for me ‘cause I had no direct sense of self to rely on). So I was always a mom at work, or a mom with my family, or a mom going to cons. It was wearing me thin, because I don’t think I liked ‘Mom’-me that much. She was rigid and harsh and judgmental; loving to be sure, but unable to see success in anything other than ‘normal’ expectations, whatever the fuck I thought those were.

I’m in my 40s now, I have one kid in college and one in middle school. And it’s only in the past couple of years that I’ve started to build a true sense of ME. It’s not easy, and people aren’t always reacting the most positively, because all of a sudden this person who has always been exactly what they thought I should be, has a voice and opinions and behaviors that don’t quite mesh with that.

I should mention that many people are reacting positively -- I’m getting a lot of compliments, and a lot of gratitude from family members that I am engaging with them again. I’ve found it’s a lot easier when I’m not constantly walking the tightrope between what person A expects and what person B expects in a conversation.

Well, this really got away from parenting talk, but I think that’s part of what the book is about. Really getting to know yourself, so you can be the best parent you can. We can’t parent when we don’t have a center to fall back on, when we are constant watching ourselves and judging ourselves and correcting ourselves. We can’t be consistent in our behavior when the dictates are constantly changing because they don’t come from us.

[heister]

Response to Rolling Blackouts, by Sarah Glidden

It’s funny that they call you a refugee, as if you’ve found refuge. But you’re always on the move, so it’s not like you’ve really found refuge yet. But that’s the first thing you learn as a refugee: how to wait in line. How to be patient.         - Rolling Blackouts, Sarah Glidden

I remember where I was when Trump announced the first Muslim ban. I was sitting with a friend at Innisfree Poetry Bookstore in Boulder, CO, waiting for another friend to perform. I scrolled through Facebook distractedly while we waited together, until I read the news. Even now, I can’t quite explain it, but the closest I can come is to say I felt sick. Nauseous. Anxious. On the verge of a panic attack. Tears were already surging their way out of my body when I told my friend quietly that I had to go and caught the next bus home. There, I cried for hours until I finally read the news that a court had ruled against the ban. As we know now, that was nowhere near the end of the struggle, but at that moment it was enough for the panic and despair to subside long enough for me to fall asleep. I remember reading about the lawyers showing up at airports, and the frenzied thoughts of going to law school so I could help in this way too. I didn’t know what else to do. What could I, a graduate student in creative writing, do to help?

I am, of course, still searching for this answer, but in the immediate aftermath one possible answer came to me when an international NGO I used to work with posted a new program calling for volunteers at a refugee camp in Greece. I initially intended to go for a month, and ended up staying for five. One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made was to stick to my teaching commitment in Colorado and leave Greece last December. Since I’ve come back home, and found myself economically bound to stay where I am for the moment, I’ve returned to this question, a question whose answer was simple, if not easy before: go, volunteer, bring back what you learned. But how to share what I’ve learned? How can I use writing to turn the tide in the refugee crisis? What can I do to help?

I bring up this context because reading Rolling Blackouts: Dispatches from Turkey, Iraq, and Syria, grapples with these same questions and brings them to the forefront for me once more. In 2010, graphic novelist Sarah Glidden traveled to Turkey, Iraq, and Syria with a group of journalists from the Seattle Globalist to seek answers to the question, “What is Journalism?” The result is this beautiful graphic narrative, released in 2016. When I first found out about this book, I was shocked, thinking her travels had been in the past two years; really, she went to Syria? When I found out the nonfiction narrative was now eight years old, I was at first disappointed; how would this reflect the current reality, when, in 2010, Syria was a prominent host of refugees and now is the home country of one of the largest groups of refugees and displaced people in the world?

It turns out that these questions were not lost on Glidden in the completion of this graphic narrative. It begins benignly enough, as Glidden contemplates the nature of journalism and her role in it as she departs on a two-month trip with her friends to cover stories about Iraqi refugees and internally displaced people. Their progressive mindset is complicated by the presence of a childhood friend who served in the U.S. Army in Iraq. This conflict comprises most of the first part of the book, as they all meet up in Turkey and plan out the stories they seek to pursue for the rest of the trip. I flagged the section set in Turkey as an excellent primer for the refugee crisis, especially a recorded interview with a UNHCR representative. The Iraq section is one of the longest, providing a brief history of the complicated tensions between Kurds and Arabs, within and beyond Iraq’s borders, and the impact of the Iraq war from numerous Kurdish and Arab Iraqi peoples’ perspectives. Throughout, Glidden presents, with both a self-reflexive eye and comfortingly soft watercolors, a painstakingly faithful representative of her travels and conversations with her peers and the people she meets overseas.

Where the narrative starts to levy its most powerful punch for me, is in the section set in Syria. In 2010, Damascus, Syria’s capital, was a thriving, modern city. Snow, not ash, fell as the group conducted interviews with displaced Iraqis seeking refuge in Syria. Knowing what Syria is now, knowing that I met friends in the Greek refugee camp that had fled from Damascus specifically, made this one of the most poignant and difficult parts of the book for me to read.

It reminded me of when I brought Rebecca Solnit’s “Letter to a Dead Man” to my first session of a composition class I taught in Colorado last spring. I brought it in part because I wanted to feel hopeful in our dark historical moment, but also because it was problematic in its own ways and would, I expected, foster meaningful dialogue. Quite simply, the piece, written in October 2011, didn’t hold up in January 2018. After reading it aloud as a class, I broke the ice in the conversation, opening up space for the students to critique as well as resonate, explaining that this was a hard piece for me to read because I have so many friends that I care deeply for who now have refugee status after fleeing Syria. The promise of the Arab Spring that Solnit wrote so eloquently about has undergone an ugly, brutal contortion in Syria, with a seemingly unending civil war that’s cost hundreds of thousands of lives and produced thirteen million refugees and displaced people. The country that was once known for its hospitality to refugees -- even though they were not legally obligated to, since they never signed the UN 1951 Refugee Convention and 1967 Protocol updates -- is now the largest producer of refugees and displaced people in the world. The Iraqi refugees living in Syria have now mostly fled back to hostility, violence, and instability in their home country, and countless others living in Syria, whether citizen or refugee, have fled to Jordan, or are stuck along the Balkan route in Turkey, Greece, or Italy. Less than one percent have been resettled in new home countries, meaning almost all are living in refugee camps, squats, or slums, often in countries openly hostile to immigrants and refugees, and nearly always in vastly under-resourced situations that erode human dignity, lack in safety, and drive people, even children, to contemplate suicide.

From the moment I realized this book was set in 2010 and about Iraqi refugees, I feared it wouldn’t resonate, that it would have been made irrelevant by the passing of time and dramatically shifting circumstances in Syria. I was wrong. While there is no one singular “refugee experience,” there are, as Glidden highlights for us, so many stories to be told -- according to the most recent counts by the UNHCR, in fact, there are currently over 25.4 million refugees with stories to be told.

In a section called “Home,” Glidden reflects, albeit briefly, on the Arab Spring that began not long after she returned home. “Their situation has gotten even worse, and there’s nothing we can do about it. It feels like all that work was for nothing. It’s not even relevant anymore,” she laments to her friend, the journalist Sarah Stuteville. She responds, “The situation changing doesn’t make what they told us any less important….The best we can hope for is that the story gets passed along. The way the reader uses that story to understand the world is up to them.”

While, as a poet, essayist, and artist (rather than a journalist), I take a different view on my role in this crisis, this section resonated deeply with me nonetheless. I think we can hope for more, for better, or at least to strive for more, strive for better. However, there is something important in recognizing that one’s work might not reach many people, but that ripple effects do, in fact, exist. As a person who studies written communication and how it can be used to build a better world, I do believe that we can cause change through telling stories, and that there are a myriad of ways to do so. I don’t deceive myself into thinking that a single story I tell will end the war in Syria, but I do know that sharing voices of refugees, immigrants, and otherwise displaced people will ultimately help, and not hurt, the work of easing this crisis. As a friend and colleague of mine, who continues to work with refugee youth in Greece, told me recently, “There are thousands of people still arriving in Greece every year and mainstream media has stopped covering the crisis that is still occurring there. People can do so much by simply not forgetting that these youth are even there.”

I don’t forget, and neither does Glidden or her journalist friends. And so, in the face of such dire circumstances and staggering human cost, we persist in our work, we persist in our compassion, we persist in sharing and amplifying the voices of marginalized people around the world. Our work may not end the crisis outright, but nothing will ever change if we don’t do the work. Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts reminds us to keep. doing. the. work. Even when it seems irrelevant, even when it seems hopeless, persist. Even as we doubt our individual impact, to ask ourselves, as her friend Sarah relayed to her, “Is it better that this story is out there in the world than if it wasn’t? If the answer is yes, then you do it.”

[denim-boyo]

Book Rambling at 1:00 am

Yeah hi sorry but I have a lot of feelings about a book my friend had me read and I stayed up to finish it and she's asleep and I need to YELL about this book rn so here this is. This is gonna get long and I'm on mobile so there's no read more and I'm sleep deprived and currently don't give a snit about grammar or proper English so sorry if this is impossible to read. "See You at Harry's" by Jo Knowles SPOILERS K so my friend got me into reading it cause it has a gay character in it and she knows what a ho I am for representation. I say I'll read it as long as the gay character doesn't die. (He doesn't and honestly I'm so in love with him he's a sweet bab and needs to be protected). So anyway the MC is this girl, Fern, and she's 12. I haven't read a book with a middle school protagonist in YEARS and seeing as I'm in college it's so weird to be transported back to that time but it's so accurate it's like I'm in middle school again and I still understand her struggles despite the age gap which is so cool. Anyway she's heading into middle school but for some reason her middle school starts in 7th grade? And her middle school is literally connected to the high school? Idk the layout is weird but it works. She also has two friends, Random and Cassie. Random is also a precious child who is so fucking sure of himself and unapologetically him and damn I want to be him when I grow up. Cassie has a crush on Random but he wants to just be friends and she kind of doesn't take the hint but she's really sweet and doesn't push anything so that's refreshing. Fern has two older siblings and one younger sibling. Sara is the oldest and just graduated high school, is working at the family restaurant until she can save up for college. Holden just entered high school as a freshman and is treated as 'other' (because he's gay) and tries to protect Fern from it by distancing himself from her on the first day. He's honestly so good and when he was happy I was happy it was super good. And the youngest sibling is Charlie. He's three and was an accident but he's a bright kid who deserved so much better! Because he frickin dies halfway through and the rest of the book is the fallout! I wasn't expecting ANY death in the book because usually if someone dies it's the lgbt character NOT THE THREE YEAR OLD INNOCENT CHILD! And because Fern was there when the accident happened that led to his death SHE BLAMES HERSELF AND SHE'S TWELVE AND I JUST COULD NOT HANDLE THE RESPONSIBILITY THIS CHILD FELT FOR SOMETHING SHE COULDN'T CONTROL I was literally balling for two hours devouring the book to see if there was some kind of resolution that could make it worth the heart ache. There kind of was, but holy shit I'm still reeling from it. The descriptions weren't violent or anything but they were so real it shook me. It was really weird though because I'm an only child and so I've never really had a relationship where someone who annoys you to death is someone you love and cherish with all your heart and you know that no matter what they'll be with you and support you, and then I'm reading about this girl who loses her youngest brother and just the dynamic of how the family as a whole grieved and dealt with it was eye opening to how that kind of works. Obviously I know that all sibling relationships are different but this kind of made it sink in. So I want to talk about Holden and his arc before I ultimately go to bed because he makes me super happy and I need that after finishing a box of tissues. K so Holden is a sweetheart and he starts dating this senior from a different high school even tho he's a freshman and at first I was *squint* but he turned out to be a nice guy and when the dad got all pissy over the age thing (after Charlie's death) Fern and Sara both stood up for him. The dad was ultimately coming from a place of love because he was worried about the senior wanting to do things Holden wasn't ready for, BUT he approached it with such hostility it made it more like he was attacking Holden for his sexuality. Admittedly the dad was a little bit not okay with Holden being gay at first but it was also stress from the loss and the worry of the future that Holden will face. So anyway he and senior boy are happy together and senior boy supports Holden throughout the aftermath of Charlie's death and they ultimately go to homecoming together and rent tuxes and it's super cute. Holden is protected by senior boy's friends and he has such a good time. They don't stay together but remain friends and vow to try and set each other up which is the best fucking thing. Holden's family is supportive at the end and it's just nice. Also like when Holden would come back from spending time with senior boy (his name is Gray idk why I didn't just introduce him fully whoops) he's literally described as 'glowing' and I'm so here for thst because whenever I see anything gay I feel so radiant like the world isn't horrible. I think that's why I've been following more lgbt blogs lately cause like I need that happiness. The only thing that I really hated about the book was the use of language. I understand that some people will say slurs from a place of ignorance but I literally almost put the book down because at the beginning Sara was saying the f slur very lightly and said that Holden was being sensitive when he got upset by it. There's also a 'fairy' joke near the end as well as other instances of the f slur but Holden kind of reclaims it? Idk it still kind of rubbed me the wrong way. Overall I liked the story and the characters, I was seriously emotionally attached to them by the end and balled my eyes out (which is a feat with how empty my soul is lol). And it was a really beautiful story of family and loss and life and survival and I know how stereotypical it sounds but y'all it's such a good book. I know I already revealed the main thing that happens but if you get the chance (and aren't triggered by homophobic slurs or child death) I would definitely recommend giving it a read. It's pretty short, 310 pages (40 chapters) and I was able to get through it in a little over 3 hours. Okay that's enough of me rambling. It is now almost 2 in the morning and I feel a lot better after letting this all out. I hope y'all are having a nice weekend! <3

[sierraisstudying]

|| October 30th, 2017 || Procrastination forced me to read half of this book last night & write the response in a day after waking up at 6 AM to drive back to school. Accepting prayers. 🎶: Friday I'm In Love • The Cure

[jdgz]

reading response one

The format of this book is interesting but comes off slightly shallow to me, since each page is basically one vignette. It reminds me of the vignettes in Design of Everyday Things by Don Norman, but without the in-depth analysis that Norman gives. That said, it does make things much easier to process since you’re only dealing with one short concept at any moment. The problem becomes that overarching themes must be extrapolated from reading every vignette. Here I’ll focus on a couple:

“Not that kind of simple” was interesting because it put into words a concept I had always considered: that simplicity on its own is not necessarily “good design”. I think that this is important to consider along with the idea we’ve been discussing that constantly adding functionality is unsustainable.

“Why you should ignore expert customers” was nice because it ties well into how we want our app, Harvestr, to work. It will likely not be useful for expert users, who want features like in-depth plant propogation information and maximizing soil efficiency through the use of nitrogen fixers and pH balancing, but the average user will never need those features, nor do they wish it was there. Our app is not FOR the expert, whose knowledge exceeds the functionality of the app.

“Extreme Usability” discusses the interesting collision between simplicity and complexity. For a system to be simple and usable, it needs to be universally applicable, which is an incredibly complex problem. The idea of “shooting a target you can’t hit” with simplicity: shooting for simplicity and landing at usability, is something we will definitely put to use in our app.

[cchristopherbryson-blog]

We All Should Be A Budding Alchemist

In response to Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist:

Paulo Coelho speaks of Personal Legends, and he speaks to me as I’m sure he’d speak to you. He tells me how I’ve lost time dwelling, meandering in the lives and times of others, fragments and misaligned fortunes, nothing of which would or will ever be my own.

The Personal Legend seems inescapable once you know it’s there, but it takes focus for…

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[abookblog]

with who or what have you had the most important relationship in your life?

That’s super deep. I think the most important relationship (outside of my family and best friend because those are key to my life survival) would probably have to be the one I found with books.

And I’m honestly not just saying that because this is a book blog. I found books by accident in trying to convince my friends that I could read the same stuff they did and that they didn't have to leave me out of the loop. Since then books have become a constant in my life, providing me refuge when I needed them and council when I wasn't feeling totally great.