lb_lee | Entries tagged with philosophical claptrap

We have lived through a lot, and many of those endeavors left us going, "Ugh, what a waste of time." Years of an education that didn't pan out, a slaughterhouse childhood, even the hours I spent farting around on the Internet... I could've used it so much better, right? What a waste.

But as I've aged, I've come to see that none of it was truly wasted.

( The nature of composting is to renourish the soil so it can grow things! And so our soul grows flowers and fruit. )

While reading about a cosmonaut, we suddenly had a few ideas gel together.

"Psychonaut" and "psychonautics" do technically describe some of what we do (just with our own batshit, rather than meditation, drugs, etc.), but we never found it a satisfying term. Then our brain suddenly thought of the word "psychosmonaut," which immediately spawned a few other related, in hindsight obvious terms:

Psycosmos: headspace. The internal universe, itself ordered by its own laws and structures.

Psycosmogony: the theories as to how the headspace came to be.

Psycosmography: the study and depiction of the structures and rules of the headspace.

Psycosmonaut: any tenant of the headspace, or someone unusually adept at navigating it.

Psycosmopolis: a headspace city made up of people from many universes.

Normally we try to avoid making up new words, but these jived with our long-simmering ideas that our headspace doesn't exist for our convenience, that it is not an inanimate tool or inert backdrop for our psychodramas, but a living, growing, changing environment with its own desires, needs, and purposes, independent of its inhabitants. That it should be taken seriously, and seen as something worth studying and paying close attention to.

It helps that we have Rawlin back, and she is clearly a groundskeeper of the place.

Hey everybody! As we mentioned in the story notes of Inside Girl, we have chosen to unlock the old Infinity Smashed archive... even as most of it will no longer be canon, on account of rebooting the story!

(“Oh, LB, again?” Look, IS has always been the old junked car in the yard that we are forever tinkering with and insisting will totally go somewhere someday. Comes with the territory.)

( Read more... )

Oh, and those of you who are here for the nonfiction mental health stuff, don’t worry. We aren’t stopping that at all. We have always preferred to switch between fiction and nonfiction, resting and recharging one by working the other. You’ll still get your write-ups of multi slapfights of yore.

Current Mood: creative

pantha asked for "a post about how to reflect your self onto the outside world when you don't have lots of money (or have far more needful things that you need to spend it on)."

You and Them

So, first thing's first, and probably the most important: find out what is for you, and what is for others.

( How To Be A Cheap Weirdo )

Rawlin: Bob asked me to write this up, so I will.

Other people here have called me a "reality-warper" or a "super-wizard," but that's exaggeration. What I really am (for lack of a better metaphor) is a weaver.

( The metaphor is tortured, for which I apologize. )

Rogan: if there is one thing I had to peg as the most important lesson I have learned about my brain, it would be: all of it, no matter how unpleasant, self-defeating, or painful, is on my side.

( Read more... )

(Inspired by talking with

armaina)

In my line of work, I meet many a fiery young person fresh to the multi trenches, determined to Join The Cause and make good in the world. A lot of them are gone within a year.

There are many reasons for this, but I want to talk about one in specific: the politics of resentment.

( Read more... )

( sidenote )

Hi! My drafting table owns my heart and soul until Boston Anarchist Book Fair is over (come and say hi this weekend!) but I wanted to shove my head in here real fast and give y'all a quick couple detox links for sexual purity politics!

Back in our tumblr days, we heard people saying this was basically the Lesbian Sex Wars Reprise, but nobody ever gave any sources or readings, so we were unable to learn more and were stuck in the crummy position of just having to hope the information was trustworthy. Well, I been reading a bunch of lesbian books and gee golly willikers, people discussing those fights there was the best cure I've ever had for that shit! So here are three lesbian feminist things discussing the transphobic, kink-negative, anti-sex worker, anti-butch-femme, and generally sex-negative shit in the community and the tactics and heartbreak therein:

Allison, Dorothy. "Public Silence, Private Terror." Skin: Talking About Sex, Class & Literature. Ithaca: Firebrand, 1984, 1994. Accessed August 12, 2024. https://efigies-ateliers.hypotheses.org/files/2014/11/Allison-public-silence-private-terror.pdf

"I got caught up in the Barnard Sex Scandal of 1982. A year earlier I had helped organize the Lesbian Sex Mafia [...]. In addition, I had started publishing my fiction and essays on incest, family violence, and sexuality. The combination of activities had made me question what, at that time, was the dominant feminist ideology on pornography. I did all this without thinking too much about the possible results [...] when I found myself accused of being a pawn of the patriarchy, an antifeminist writer, and a pimp for the pornographers, I was surprised and unsure how to reply."

Freeman, Jo [Joreen]. "Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood." Ms., (April 1976): 49-51, 92-98. Accessed August 12, 2024. https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/trashing.htm

"Trashing may even be thinly veiled by the newest group techniques of criticism/self-criticism, mediation, and therapy. Whatever methods are used, [...] This attack is accomplished by making you feel that your very existence is inimical to the [feminist] Movement and that nothing can change this short of ceasing to exist. These feelings are reinforced when you are isolated from your friends as they become convinced that their association with-you is similarly inimical to the Movement and to themselves. Any support of you will taint them. Eventually all your colleagues join in a chorus of condemnation which cannot be silenced, and you are reduced to a mere parody of your previous self.")

Nestle, Joan. "Voices from Lesbian Herstory" and "My History with Censorship." A Restricted Country. New York: Firebrand, 1987, accessed October 16, 2024. https://transreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024-03-21_65fbab8f192b6_Arestrictedcountry-NestleJoan1940-IthacaN.Y.1987-IthacaN.Y.FirebrandBooks-9780932379375-d3baf967efaba267e721d81cc9441ca2-AnnasArchive.pdf

"two journals I write for, Bad Attitude and On Our Backs, have not been allowed into many women's bookstores around this country and in Canada because the contents were found to be "prosado-masochistic, antifeminist, antiwoman, anti-Semitic, and racist." Now, as you all know, these are the words that call for exile from our community, for there is no argument possible when this code is used. (As a Jewish woman, I find it ironic that Gentiles are in such a hurry to protect me from myself.)"

Current Mood: busy

Rogan: I have never been an activist, even when the cause is great. Partly because I am disabled and just can’t make my natural ebb and flows work with the schedule, and partly because my brain can’t handle the opacity of most political process.

( You can’t kick me out! I live here! I LIVE HERE! )

Rogan: A long time ago, me and Sneak were talking about design. Mac, who isn't artistic or design-oriented at all, was curious and asked what the difference was between style and design. This blog post is based on that long ago conversation. It also has the addition of a discussion of craft, because Mori has a hate-on for the Cybertruck a mile long but is also fascinated by it, and craft is why.

( Style, Design, and Craft )

( Self-help one-pagers: a love story about craft. )

Current Mood: thoughtful

While reading a book about kindness and humanity, I came across something called the contact hypothesis, the idea that prejudice gets lowered via contact with the people you're biased against. (There are provisos and such--you have to ACTUALLY get to know them, if you're just in their vicinity but they remain unknown, that can make prejudice go UP, stuff like that.)

And honestly, that's something I've noticed with multi stuff. I've had a lot of success at people changing their opinions about multis, just by existing at them.

( Eating sandwiches... LIKE A MULTI )

Because people are responding to my post about social justice and self-hate, I thought I'd list the things that helped me escape the tarpit. Some of you have likely seen me mention these before, sorry.

Naturally, all of these works are flawed and imperfect. That's indeed PART of why they were helpful for me! Part of escaping the tarpit was letting go of moral perfectionism. There are no saviors here, only people. Link your own sanity-savers in the comments below!

( CITATIONS! 8D )

GUIDE: The moment that "stick" is taken away... think about it! If you aren't threatened with punishment, what will drive you to succeed? To make those phone calls? To make that list? To get through that list? And what will happen if you don't do the things you're supposed to do? [...] What if you found out that voice had no power over you at all? What if you didn't believe that you were going to die if you do what it told you to do?

STUDENT: Well, I think I would just do the next thing on the list.

--Cheri Huber's There is Nothing Wrong With You: Going Beyond Self-Hate, published 2001 by Keep It Simple Books, pg. 71-72

( The aftermath of a social justice meltdown, with the help of a Buddhist book from my youth. )

EDIT: I have added a bibliography for people trying to escape social justice monster jail!

A couple friends have mentioned finding this metaphor useful, so we're reposting it publicly. (It was originally posted in May 2013.)

So, imagine a heartbreaking trauma is big and obvious, like a Galapagos turtle in the garden. Sometimes the memory can be lost, in which case the turtle is hiding.

But then there are turtle rocks. These turtles are in the garden, right out in the open... but they're camouflaged as big honking rocks. So you know they're there, you see them all the time, but hey, they're just rocks, right? Who cares?

You don't notice them. You don't even really look at them hard, because... man, it's JUST A ROCK. Who cares? It's like your eyes glaze right over them, and whenever someone goes, "Uh, dude, that's a turtle," you just go, "What're you talking about, it's a rock," and if people remind you, "that rock is MOVING, it has legs," you go, "you're overreacting, it's just a special rock. Don't you have leggy rocks too? Everyone does." Even when you're surrounded by people who want to strangle you because, "OMG IT'S A FUCKING TURTLE WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU," all you can see is a rock. And you can talk about the rock to someone if you want, but there's no emotional context, so it doesn't FEEL important.

I know I just posted about Yeung, but I just found his Christianity and Forgiveness posts (here's the second) and now I'm linking it to my intro zine because it's that important and relevant: the idea of predators who twist and abuse forgiveness to perpetrate more violence. Although he discusses it in a DID frame of reference, I can think of singlet readers on this blog who would find them equally useful for their own situations!

I wish I had found Yeung's posts about that ages ago! I am going to be linking the shit out of this because it comes up so often!

Quick thought from the lecture I just gave: mental health comics and erotic comics have a lot in common.

( Back into my hideyhole! )

Current Mood: drained

We have massively updated our section of healthymultiplicity.com's Free Read page by adding the following short comics and zines (most of which were also posted here or on Deviantart at some point):

We've also reuploaded our very old comics Questions from 2010 and This is Mac, This is Rogan from 2008. At this point, they're so old they now may prove useful for historical citations of certain subcultures and language use at the time.

( A big long rambly thing about why we put those up, and what we hope to keep doing. )

Current Music: Romanovsky & Phillips - "Straightening Up The House"

Inspired by a conversation with

monsterqueers.

Even though we came to plurality by way of soulbonding (that is, artists who talked to their characters), over the years, we got into the habit of downplaying our own fictivity.

( Let's talk about it. )

Current Mood: determined

Two years after it came out, Maia Kobabe's comic, Gender Queer, has become one the most banned books this year. It's been accused of being pornographic, pedophilic, and "too adult" for teenagers, with the presumption that (A) all these things are true, (B) that such things are harmful, and (C) such things must be removed from our libraries. You know, for the good of the children.

And I see these adults, posturing over a book they have not read and loudly proclaim they will never read, and I think of How Loathsome.

( Books that are inappropriate for children, experiences that are inappropriate for children, and childhoods that are inappropriate for children. )

Current Mood: thoughtful

Thanks to @polyfrazzlemented for sharing this handy bit of info with me! Check out this snippet from Iroquoian conceptions of personhood and self!

Source: Mann, B. A. (2004). Iroquoian women: The gantowisas. New York: Peter Lang. This passage is found on pages 326-329.

Iroquoian spirituality is unmediated, direct contact between human and non-human spiritual agents. Connecting with outside entities who operate on their own, non-human agenda is a frighteningly real experience that shakes you to the bone, leaving a sense of shivering awe. Such spiritual experiences occur in a non-ordinary reality that is entered by walking through the Open Door of medicine into the connecting realm of Spirit. To pass through, assuming you are Iroquoian, you must use that element of your own spirit that came from the stars and that will, eventually, walk the Milky Way Trail back home to Te jennoniakoua, the Seven Dancers of the Pleiades, where Spirits dance with Sky Woman.

( Read more... )

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lb_lee

Table of Contents

Scribbles and Bits

Entries tagged with philosophical claptrap

Nothing is Wasted

Psycosmos

Happy 25th Birthday, Infinity Smashed!

Being Yourself/s On a Budget

Threads of the World

The Lesson

The Eternal Heroic Struggle

The Lesbian Sex Wars and Modern-Day Purity Politics

Politics and The Crazy Junkyard Man

Style, Design, and Craft

The Contact Hypothesis

Self-Hate and Social Justice Bibliography

Social Justice and Self-Hate

Turtle Rocks

More Robert Yeung: Christianity and Forgiveness

Erotic Comics and Mental Health Comics

healthymultiplicity.com update

Making Fictivity Ordinary

Inappropriate For Children

Iroquoian women: The gantowisas

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