My dad was a huge Tolkien fan, read and reread the trilogy over ten times. I, a brat of a teenage daughter, got to accompany him to all three films when they first were in theaters. I was in high school, my dad was over fifty at the time. We didn't get along that well, but he was a good dad. I was a good kid, just had an attitude. He drove to the theaters as soon as he could buy the tickets ahead of time, and got us tickets (along with my sister) to all three films. It is such a special memory of mine. He died in 2010, I was 22. I will never forget all of the great conversations we had about these movies. He told me so much about the books. My husband was the first person to buy tickets to the local showing coming up this weekend, I cried when I found out. I am so excited for him to be able to see these great films in the theater with me. I am also really missing my dad. I used some quotes from the book at his memorial service. I don't think I have it in me right now to find the exact ones. I just thought maybe someone else relates with the feelings I'm having right now. Thank you for reading.

7th: Ami Cusack 1.0 (Vanuatu - 6th)

queen shit
u/SMC0629:
Ami is easily one of the best villains the show has ever seen, and her time on Vanuatu is super important. From the swap to the final 8, she practically controls the entire game, seeming to be unstoppable. Her strategy and charm make her super entertaining to watch, but her downfall is just as good at the hands of Scout and Twila. Easily one of the best characters in Vanuatu, so happy she made endgame.
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u/DryBonesKing:
I don’t think I can even do a small little short write-up like this on Ami and give her the justice she deserves. She is in contention for being the most complex character of all time, with her balancing out being probably one of the most empathetic people Survivor has ever cast while simultaneously playing one of the most ice-cold games the show has ever seen. Ami’s ability to turn off her heart and completely snow someone in the most ruthless way possible is second to nobody.
There is something truly beautiful watching this force grow and develop into the de facto leader of the Yasur all women’s tribe and become essentially a Queen that ended up taking herself out of the game; her biggest mistake ended up being a brief, fleeting moment of empathy that she had never displayed prior, and it makes all the more impactful to see that of all things lead to her end. Combine that with the grandness of Leann’s blindside the round prior to her own and Scout’s voting confessional for her, and you essentially are left with possibly the most dynamic vote-out in Survivor history, bar none.
My Dad is someone who barely remembers any Survivor seasons after they finish airing, but Vanuatu is one of the few he remembers. And while it probably helps that both my Mom and I are obsessed with the season, it probably also is mainly because of Ami, who just struck a real deep image in him as probably one of the most intimidating villains the show has ever produced. I think that’s probably my biggest takeaway regarding her and why she feels so important to me; if you watched Vanuatu, you should just simply know how amazing she is. God, how in the literal fuck is someone like her not even the best character on her season? Vanuatu truly is one of the most top-heavy, blessed seasons the show has ever produced.
Overall Rank – 10/821
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u/Zanthosus:
Ah yes, the ice queen and star of Vanuatu. She’s a spectacular addition to an already incredible cast and the season wouldn’t have half the soul and complexity without her.
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u/Tommyroxs45:
Ami’s the Ice Queen! Her leadership role on Vanuatu is just perfect, and her downfall at the hands of Chris, Twila, Eliza, and Scout is told so eloquently that you don’t hate Ami but you also understand why she’s being voted out. Now is Ami the most entertaining presence? No, but her role and story is just something not replicated by anybody else ever and it just makes it something so special.
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u/ninjedi1:
What can I say about Ami that isn't going to be said already? As much as I hate the term with how often it's used for almost every survivor woman, Ami really the mother of Yasur, as she cares about all the women on it, showing her more caring side, but she can also show her claws when the men show up, ready to take them out as well. However, it's that personality and clashes with the other women that lead to her downfall, and it's overall a more unique and interesting villain story compared to others.
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u/Regnisyak1:
Ami Cusack (Vanuatu, 6/18)
One of my favorite pieces of symbolism that occurs in Vanuatu is the motif of Ami stabbing coconuts with a pike. How can a story get any more perfect than that? And just like Bubba, just like Lisa, just like Rory, just like Sarge, just like Chad… each person gets their coconut on the pike. One at a time, one is frozen, iced out, and taken to the curb. The ruthless gameplay of Ami instantly becomes a classic aspect of her character. But, it’s the contexts behind her character that lead her to be such an exquisite character. One is her abundant feminism on the season, and how she advocates so hard for women's power, only to be destroyed by the existing fractures of the Yasur tribe. One is her kind-hearted soul, as we see countless times throughout the season, perfectly contradicting her ruthless nature. One is her brother watching over her, which leads to her vitriolic reaction against Twila swearing on her son’s life. One is her being the first lesbian (tied only with Scout) in the series who makes it to the stage where she can have a loved one run out to see her. The culmination of these character traits leads to a character that quickly becomes a legend, with some of the most intense complexity the show has ever seen, and much-needed representation the show needed.
Ami’s story on Vanuatu is a beautiful crescendo that depicts a rise to power and a fall from grace. Ami was in good on the tribe, had maintained a fantastic position, and was the mafia boss in the game, threatened by anyone who said her name, and eliminated thereby after. But the morality of Ami is what makes her so interesting. Ami is driven and determined, but her heart of gold shines through constantly. Her competitive streak came out on Survivor, but through her relationships, personal contexts, and incredible characterization, we get one of the most interesting villains in the history of the show and someone with a downfall that feels earned. It’s tragic, the way she’s eliminated, but the cockiness and arrogance she gets are incredible.
Undeniably, Ami’s story is wrapped around the concept of gender in Survivor. Her most important confessional explaining this fact is also her first confessional. At the ceremony at the beginning of the season, the women are put aside while the men are celebrated. Ami then states that she is not used to being put behind a man. At this point, the switch in Ami is already turned, and when the tribes are confirmed to be separated, Ami becomes a leading voice for feminism and keeps them together until the end. Adamant to create and maintain the first stable all-girls alliance, Ami’s determination becomes clear.
Even at the beginning, Ami is understood to be the one around camp, celebrating their gender, rather than tearing it down. She’s the leading voice against the men and beating them at the challenges. She is expressive toward Twila’s behavior on camp and becomes defensive when Twila states that she does not respect women who go around camp and just play with their hair all day (ask for your hair to be French braided!). She’s the first person to run up to Dolly when she breaks down. At first, during the pre-swap, Ami’s behavior is streamlined to supporting the women in the tribe, even if the cracks are already formulating quickly in the Yasur tribe, whether it is the division of women from young (+ Lisa) vs. old, or Twila and Mia’s behaviors further separating the two groups.
Preswap Ami shows her morals in the game - she deeply wants an all-women’s alliance to work, and there are clear good motivations for why she wants it to - it has never happened on Survivor from that point, and the culture expressed early by the Vanuatuans in the island made her volcano erupt and her determination set ablaze.
However, Ami’s motivations quickly begin to change, and that’s the moment that she comes into contact with the men. Yasur 2.0 has some new additions to the tribe, seen with Rory and Bubba, and that’s when Ami’s vitriol and desire to keep the women together becomes more harsh and unwelcoming than previously. Let’s start with Bubba and his ousting. Throughout the game, Bubba has been described as someone who is a well-meaning man who is out there for one reason - his family. His character is proven constantly to be a positive attribute of the tribe, and Lopevi 2.0 would have been shocked if it was him over Rory. But the issue is that Bubba gave a signal to Chris, leading to his spiral in the game.
Ami, at this point, is livid, and this is the most aggressive that we’ve seen her in the game. Immediately, the moniker “ice queen” becomes evident because after Bubba does that, there is 0 hope for him to reenter the good graces in Ami’s game. Ami doesn’t even need the extra 8 hours after the challenge to mull over the vote - it’s Bubba, full stop, and she doesn’t really have to do any more convincing. A man was going to go home anyway, so why even bother changing the vote around all day? Bubba’s boot represents the potential threat of the men making their leeway in the game, and the moment that signal goes off is when Ami gets lit up and she begins to play individually, in the best efforts to save the women’s tribe.
Or, so we think. It isn’t until the next episode, that we truly see Ami’s vision of the all-women tribe start to fall apart, with the leading domino - Lisa. I’ve mentioned before in this rankdown that I find Lisa to be an underrated character, just because of how integral she is to demonstrating Ami’s determination and no-nonsense attitude in the game. Lisa at the get-go was determined as untrustworthy because of her swing vote nature between the younger and older women on the tribe, and Ami’s loyalty and trust in her was already teetering on a thin line. It wasn’t until Lisa had a massive slip of the tongue, though, that her game imploded, and Ami again, iced out Lisa.
Lisa, asking Ami where the manioc is, in case something… happens to her, set off alarm bells within Ami, even if it was a clear slip, Freudian or not. With Lisa’s vote, we understand that the women’s alliance, while nice in concept, ultimately does not mean much down the line when Ami is threatened. Ami’s paranoia reaches an all-time high in this episode, and another switch is flipped when we see that she also understands that Survivor is an individualistic game at points, with the collectivist attitude allowing her to get to the end by helping her out when necessary. Lisa’s (and Bubba’s) vote also represents the beginning of the entitled Ami that we see and know throughout the season. She still talks about the women’s alliance with big eyes, but she comes cocky at this point, realizing that she is able to take people so easily out with her alliance and leadership role. The irony of Lisa’s vote, too, is that Lisa was a loyal soldier to Ami, even despite her previous behaviors before. We might never know what happened to the later portion of the game, but I can bet you that Lisa might have been more willing to keep Leann in the game and vote Eliza out. The shortsightedness with Lisa's vote is Ami’s game-losing move because her perception is changed, she loses a number, and the aura of Ami’s determination in the game becomes clear.
However, one character sees right through the bullshit of Ami, and how her ego is taking over her brain. Rory, the gruff crabass on the side who is doing anything to survive the little world of women on his tribe immediately clocks Ami for her behavior, and her brutal honesty about her wanting to keep the women together until the end becomes evident. Rory’s understanding that Ami is leading the vote him because he is a man, pisses Rory off, and he goes ablaze with the camp and Ami. Several slingshots later, Yasur skirts by tribal, but the merge is when the Ami vs. Rory relationship shines. Rory, fearing for his life in the game, is completely iced out by Ami, yet again, because of his gender. She wants to vote out all the men in quick succession and believes that the process should be easy and done.
But over Rory’s dead body will he go out without swinging. As soon as the other men come to the camp, Rory leaks Ami’s sour behavior toward him at the camp, and her complete cockiness and arrogance are evident as the women’s alliance becomes more and more true. Rory running around and throwing out that Ami is a massive threat in the game is important because it puts people on edge, and the other players begin to see what Ami is, even despite the misconstruals - she is a shrewd player who is potentially using the women’s alliance as protection for herself as the game goes on further. Scout, Twila, all the men, and Eliza at some point begin to see through Ami’s behavior in the game and realize that she is the kingpin in the tribe.
However, people continue to fall in line because Ami’s ice froze over the men at that point. Rory becomes the quick sacrificial lamb for their tribe, especially given Twila’s connection to the other men. Lea is a dead man walking following Twila’s fear against him lying to him. Chad… well Chad is a man, so sadly he needs to go. Ami (and Twila) are the leaders against the men, with Ami’s context being that she needs the men out as soon as possible and doing anything in her power to do anything for it.
This is why Ami’s next vote is so peculiar - she doesn’t go for Chris, she goes for Eliza. The moment Ami takes her eyes off the prize, she implodes and her closest ally, Leann, is immediately stabbed in the back by Twila, Scout, Eliza, and Chris. Her deviation seems peculiar when given how she played the game throughout the season - she wants the women to win, yet Eliza becomes so annoying it becomes obvious that Ami is a people pleaser at the end of the day. She wanted to help Twila and Scout by getting out Eliza, and yet they used that against her. Ami was ultimately never an ice queen, but she wanted to do what was best for the others around her, and ultimately her judgment in this moment was a negative.
Leann and Ami have an interesting relationship on the show too. I rewatched Vanuatu for this writeup, and Leann impressed me the most from the season. She has a tenderness quiet about her that I found to be really interesting because it actively went against Ami’s larger-than-life personality of being a freeing person. I loved Ami’s strategy in the season, where she was actively using a personal love language with being a touchy person with others around her, and the juxtaposition of the more reserved Leann leads to a power duo between them where one is based around their quietness and the other is drawing people in through comforting people with physical touch.
Following Leann’s final tribal council, Ami’s shining moment was the following episode where we see the catty side of Ami fly out, as she expertly tries to maintain herself into the game. In this episode, we see Ami’s vulnerability at an all time high. Ami has never been on the bottom of the game at this point, and the position is terrifying for her because she is a control freak, for lack of a better term. We see Ami have a lot of emotions in the episode - anger and bitterness toward Twila and Scout. Love and admiration for Julie and Eliza. Desperation to maintain in the game, and her ambitions at an all time high. The performance in her boot is one of the episode, and the emotional climax of her ousting is devasting in a lot of senses, even when Ami was treated as a villain. It shows the complexities of her character and how, even though we are not rooting for her, she is still a tragic figure.
Three important relationships exist within her boot episode, being Eliza, Scout, and Twila. With Eliza, we see her play her like a fiddle and attempt to get her to switch sides to keep Ami in the game. I love how Ami is brutally honest with Eliza because she was one of the leading voices to keep her in the game after awhile. Eliza is an annoying personality, but they always forged a big sistelittle sister, and I think Ami’s constant working on Eliza at the reward was really important characterization that shows her personal nature in the game. But at the same time, Eliza is aware of her position in the game, and I think while she was portrayed as a swing vote but knew that Ami was the ultimate threat. Eliza talking about how much she loves Ami at the end of the episode however, and their tears at the end was beautiful.
With Scout, we see her nasty side come out, which is especially strange given their initial perceptions of Scout and how she was seen as the wiser woman on the tribe. Ami was a person who perpetuated that belief with Scout, but as the episode went on she began to see through the ultimate bullshitter on the island, Scout. Ami yelling at Scout to put down her blanket was a great scene, but it was really their dualing voting confessionals. Ami basically saying that she was not apart of any rainbow she’s ever seen and Scout referring that Ami was arrogant with lightning striking the highest point was some beautiful characterization between the two.
But the relationship with Twila is the centralizing moment for Ami. Something that I have glossed over during this writeup was the death of her younger brother. That was depicted during the incredible reward with coffee and Rory earlier in the season, but we learn that Ami is guided by her brother in sky, who is looking down on her from above. The characterization of that seems random at first, but we learn how it fits into the story the moment that Twila swore on her son’s life when she offered to stay in the group with Leann and Ami, and then turned around and voted her that not. Ami’s vitriol following that tribal felt earned because she was genuinely hurt by Twila swearing on something so serious. Twila was not proud of what she did, but she had to do it to stay in the game, at least by her ways of thinking. Twila is a great character because she seemingly overthinks aspects of the social strategy in the game, but this time, the consequences were severe.
I loved their fight in the following episode because you can see Ami’s heartbreak. Ami blames Twila for getting pulled into their vacuum of nastiness, but also continually calls her a disgusting human being for swearing on her son and making that mistake. With Ami, it is a personal moment, and Twila’s flippancy with life and death actually has a severe negative consequence with her. It’s a great characterizing scene, one of the best fights of the season, and helps embellish both of them.
Twila and Ami culminate to an incredible jury speech in a sea of fantastic moments from the final tribal council of Vanuatu. With Ami, she needs to know about the lying and why Chris and Twila relied on it so much during their time on the Fire Islands. She wants them to refute the lying, but she also needs to know why she didnt have what it takes to make it to the end. I love what Chris says here, saying that she has too soft of a heart (the ice queen was just the exterior), but it was Twila’s response where Twila was playing the game in anyway possible, and that meant doing anything, even those idea that are considered unsavory. Twila’s answer of “a little colder, a little meaner. I wear my emotions on my sleeve” was an incredible moment for both characters, and I think there was a massive sense of closure between the two characters.
But it’s the fact that Ami respected Twila enough, and her answer, that we get her being the only other vote for Twila at this moment besides Scout. I think there are a lot of reasons for why Ami voted for her. It shows her kindness toward other characters and how ultimately the ice queen exterior can be melted. It demonstrates that she ultimately was pro feminism the entire time, and even with Twila, someone she detested at the end, she still supported that narrative, and her goals were not fake at all. And, at the end of the day, Ami’s narrative still supported that. I love that she ultimately reaffirmed her goals during the season, and it’s yet another layer in her complex character.
Unarguably, Ami has one of the greatest stories in the history of Survivor. There was a conciseness with Ami, where she was not overexposed on the beach, but her downfall felt well-planned, and her relationships were defined inciredibly with a sense of nastiness, love, and anger that blended into a set of emotional and pecuilar relationships. Her emotional, kind attitude created a unique villain that might never be replicated on Survivor again and the complexities of her brother, relationships, ice queen and harsh strategy, created a character that was a rolling amount of fun, intensity, and someone with a downfall that had everyone seated.
My last note on Ami is that she is a great confessionalist and can be quite funny at times. Vanuatu is filled with a lot of fantastic confessionals (and also ones where Chris belittles women again and again, ZING!), but Ami had a few that really stuck out to me. One was the great Michael Jordan one with Bubba, where she mentions that Michael Jordan would never talk to the other team. Another was about Scout in her slash and burn episode, mentioning that Scout put cayenne pepper down her pants and she is ready to DANCE! And lastly, one of my favorite quotes on Vanuatu was when Eliza matched the grapefruits in the memory challenges, and Ami so seductively yells “nice grapefruits!” No random moment makes me laugh harder than that one.
I was a little nervous when I got Ami’s writeup (she was last picked, lol), but I really am glad that I was able to experience Vanuatu again and watch it more from Ami’s perspective. Previously, I did it from other people, like Chris the first time, and Twila the next, but with Ami, we understand her villain arc so well because it is rooted in her real life contexts. Before writing this, she was already top 10, but at this point I am even considering moving her higher. Slay Vanuatu tho!
SMC0629: 8
DryBonesKing: 9
Zanthosus: 4
Tommyroxs45: 10
Regnisyak1: 9
DavidW1208: 19
ninjedi1: 10
Average Placement: 9.857
Total Points: 69
Standard Deviation: 4.525 (8th Lowest)

Summary of islamqa

“And of mankind is he who purchases idle talks to mislead from the path of Allah…” [Quran 31:6]
Ibn Abbas said: this means singing.
Mujahid said: this means playing the drum.
Al-Hasan al-Basri said: this ayah was revealed concerning singing and musical (woodwind) instruments.
Al-Sa’di said: this includes all manner of haram speech, all idle talk and falsehood, and all nonsense that encourages kufr and disobedience; the words of those who say things to refute the truth and argue in support of falsehood to defeat the truth; and backbiting, slander, lies, insults and curses; the singing and musical instruments of the Shaytan; and musical instruments which are of no spiritual or worldly benefit.
Ibn al-Qayyim said: The interpretation of the Sahabah and Tabi'in, that idle talk refers to singing, is sufficient. This was reported with sahih isnad from Ibn Abbas and Ibn Masud. Abu’l-Sahba said: I asked Ibn Masud about the ayah [Quran 31:6]. He said: By Allah, besides Whom there is no other god, this means singing – and he repeated it three times. It was also reported with a sahih isnad from Ibn Umar that this means singing.
Abu Umamah reported that the Messenger of Allah said: “Do not sell singing slave women, do not buy them and do not teach them. There is nothing good in this trade, and their price is haram."
([He said:] There is narration about this from Umar bin Al-Khattab. [Abu 'Eisa said:] We only know of the Hadith of Abu Umamah, like this, from this route. Some of the people of knowledge have criticized Ali bin Yazid (one of the narrators) and graded him weak, and he is from Ash-Sham)
Concerning such things as this the ayah [Quran 31:6] was revealed.
“And befool them gradually those whom you [Iblis] can among them with your voice…” [Quran 17:64]
Ibn al-Qayyim said: Everyone who blows into a flute or other woodwind instrument, or who plays any haram kind of drum, this is the voice of the Shaytan...
“Do you then wonder at this recitation? And you laugh at it and weep not, Wasting your lifetime in pastime and amusements” [Quran 53:59-61]
Ikrimah said: it was narrated from Ibn Abbas that al-sumud [verbal noun from samidun, translated here as “Wasting your lifetime in pastime and amusements”] means “singing”, in the dialect of Himyar; it might be said “Ismidi lana” [‘sing for us’ – from the same root as samidun/sumud] meaning “ghaniy” [sing]. And he said: When they [kuffar] heard the Quran, they would sing, then this ayah was revealed.
Ibn Abbas: (this means) singing. This is Yemeni (dialect): ismad lana means ghan lana [sing to us]...”
“Among my ummah there will certainly be people who permit zina, silk, alcohol and musical instruments…” (al-Bukhari 5590)
Ibn Taymiyah said: This hadith indicates that ma’azif are haram, and ma’azif means musical instruments according to the scholars of (Arabic) language. This word includes all such instruments.
Ibn al-Qayyim said: And concerning the same topic similar comments were narrated from Sahl ibn Sa’d al-Sa’idi, ‘Imran ibn Husayn, ‘Abd-Allah ibn ‘Amr, ‘Abd-Allah ibn 'Abbas, Abu Hurayrah, Abu Umamah al-Bahili, ‘Aishah Umm al-Mu’minin, ‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, Anas ibn Malik, ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Sabit and al-Ghazi ibn Rabi'ah. Then he mentioned it in Ighathat al-Lahfan, and it indicates that they (musical instruments) are haram.
It was narrated that Nafi said: Ibn Umar heard a woodwind instrument, and he put his fingers in his ears and kept away from that path. He said to me, O Nafi, can you hear anything? I said, No. So he took his fingers away from his ears and said: I was with the Prophet and he heard something like this, and he did the same thing. Sunan Abi Dawud 4924, sahih according to al-Albani)
Ibn Taymiyah said: Concerning music which a person does not intend to listen to, there is no prohibition or blame, according to scholarly consensus. Hence blame or praise is connected to listening, not to hearing. The one who listens to the Quran will be rewarded for it, whereas the one who hears it without intending or wanting to will not be rewarded for that, because actions are judged by intentions. The same applies to musical instruments which are forbidden: if a person hears them without intending to, that does not matter.
Al-Qasim said: Singing is part of falsehood.
Al-Hasan said: if there is music involved in a dinner invitation (walimah), do not accept the invitation.
Ibn Taymiyah said: The view of the 4 Imams is that all kinds of musical instruments are haram. It was reported in Sahih al-Bukhari and elsewhere that the Prophet said that there would be among his ummah those who would allow zina, silk, alcohol and musical instruments, and he said that they would be transformed into monkeys and pigs… None of the followers of the imams mentioned any dispute concerning the matter of music.
Al-Albani said: The 4 madhabs agree that all musical instruments are haram.
Ibn al-Qayyim said: The madhhab of Abu Hanifah is the strictest in this regard, and his comments are among the harshest. His companions clearly stated that it is haram to listen to all musical instruments such as the flute and the drum, even tapping a stick. They stated that it is a sin which implies that a person is a fasiq (rebellious evil doer) whose testimony should be rejected. They went further than that and said that listening to music is fisq (rebellion, evildoing) and enjoying it is kufr.
Imam Malik was asked about playing the drum or flute, if a person happens to hear the sound and enjoy it whilst he is walking or sitting. He said: He should get up if he finds that he enjoys it, unless he is sitting down for a need or is unable to get up. If he is on the road, he should either go back or move on. He said: “The only people who do things like that, in our view, are fasiqs.”
Ibn Abd al-Barr said: Among the types of earnings which are haram by scholarly consensus are riba, the fee of a prostitute, anything forbidden, bribes, payment for wailing over the dead and singing, payments to fortune-tellers and those who claim to know the unseen and astrologers, payments for playing flutes, and all kinds of gambling.
Ibn al-Qayyim said, explaining the view of Imam al-Shafi: His companions who know his madhab stated that it is haram and denounced those who said that he permitted it.
The author of Kifayat al-Akhbar, who was one of the Shafi’is, counted musical instruments such as flutes and others, as being munkar (evil), and the one who is present (where they are being played) should denounce them.
Ibn al-Qayyim said: With regard to the view of Imam Ahmad, his son Abd-Allah said: I asked my father about singing. He said: Singing makes hypocrisy grow in the heart; I do not like it.
Ibn Qudamah, the researcher of the Hanbali madhhab – said: Musical instruments are of three types which are haram. These are the strings and all kinds of flute, and the lute, drum and rabab (stringed instrument) and so on. Whoever persists in listening to them, his testimony should be rejected. And he said; If a person is invited to a gathering in which there is something objectionable, such as wine and musical instruments, and he is able to denounce it, then he should attend and speak out against it, because then he will be combining two obligatory duties. If he is not able to do that, then he should not attend.
Al-Tabari said: The scholars of all regions agree that singing is haram and should be prevented. Although Ibrahim ibn Sa’d and ‘Ubayd-Allah al-‘Anbari differed from the majority, (it should be noted that) the Messenger of Allah said: “Adhere to the majority.” And whoever dies differing from the majority, dies as a jahil. (Tafsir al-Qurtubi).
Shaykh al-Fawzan said: What Ibrahim ibn Sa’d and ‘Ubayd-Allah al-‘Anbari said about singing is not like the kind of singing that is known nowadays, for they would never have allowed this kind of singing which is the utmost in immorality and obscenity.
Ibn Taymiyah said: It is not permissible to make musical instruments. And he said: According to the majority of fuqaha, it is permissible to destroy musical instruments, such as the tanbur [a stringed instrument similar to a mandolin]. This is the view of Malik and is the more famous of the two views narrated from Ahmad. And he said: …Ibn al-Mundhir mentioned that the scholars agreed that it is not permissible to pay people to sing and wail… the consensus of all the scholars whose views we have learned about is that wailing and singing are not allowed. Al-Shu’bi, al-Nakha’i and Malik regarded that as haram. Two of the students of Abu Hanifah said: it is not permissible to pay anything for singing and wailing. This is our view. And he said: musical instruments are the wine of the soul, and what it does to the soul is worse than what intoxicating drinks do.
Ibn Abi Shaybah reported that a man broke a mandolin belonging to another man, and the latter took his case to Shurayh (Judge). But Shurayh did not award him any compensation – i.e., he did not make the first man pay the cost of the mandolin, because it was haram and had no value.
Al-Baghawi stated in a fatwa that it is haram to sell all kinds of musical instruments such as mandolins, flutes, etc. Then he said: If the images are erased and the musical instruments are altered, then it is permissible to sell their parts, whether they are silver, iron, wood or whatever.
Abu Bakr: "Musical instruments of the Shaytan in the house of the Messenger of Allah!” (Bukhari 3931)

Al-Daff: An appropriate exception

The exception to the above is the daff – without any rings (i.e., a hand-drum which looks like a tambourine, but without any rattles) – when used by women on Eids and at weddings. This is indicated by sahih reports.
Ibn Taymiyah said: But the Prophet made allowances for certain types of musical instruments at weddings and the like, and he made allowances for women to play the daff at weddings and on other joyful occasions. But the men at his time did not play the daff or clap with their hands. It was narrated in al-Sahih that he said: “Clapping is for women and tasbih (saying Subhan Allah) is for men.” And he cursed women who imitate men and men who imitate women. Because singing and playing the daff are things that women do, the Salaf used to call any man who did that a mukhannath (effeminate man), and they used to call male singers effeminate – and how many of them there are nowadays! It is well known that the Salaf said this.
In a similar vein is the hadith of Aishah, when her father entered upon her at the time of Eid, and there were two young girls with her who were singing the verses that the Ansar had said on the day of Bu’ath – and any sensible person will know what people say about war. Abu Bakr said: “Musical instruments of the Shaytan in the house of the Messenger of Allah!” The Messenger of Allah had turned away from them and was facing the wall – hence some scholars said that Abu Bakr would not tell anybody off in front of the Messenger of Allah, but he thought that the Messenger of Allah was not paying attention to what was happening. And Allah knows best. He (the Prophet) said: “Leave them alone, O Abu Bakr, for every nation has its Eid, and this is our Eid, the people of Islam.” This hadith shows that it was not the habit of the Prophet and his Companions to gather to listen to singing, hence Abu Bakr al-Siddiq called it “the musical instruments of the Shaytan”. And the Prophet approved of this appellation and did not deny it when he said, “Leave them alone, for every nation has its Eid and this is our Eid.” This indicates that the reason why this was permitted was because it was the time of Eid, and the prohibition remained in effect at times other than Eid, apart from the exceptions made for weddings in other ahadith. Shaykh al-Albani explained this in his valuable book Tahrim Alat al-Tarab (the Prohibition of Musical Instruments). The Prophet approved of young girls singing at Eid, as stated in the hadith: “So that the mushrikin will know that in our religion there is room for relaxation.” There is no indication in the hadith about the two young girls that the Prophet was listening to them. The commands and prohibitions have to do with listening, not merely hearing, just as in the case of seeing, the rules have to do with intentionally looking and not what happens by accident. So it is clear that this is for women only. Imam Abu Ubayd defined the daff as “that which is played by women.”

Some people object:

• Drums at times of war and military music: An inappropriate exception

Some of them make an exception for drums at times of war, and consequentially some modern scholars have said that military music is allowed. But there is no basis for this at all, for a number of reasons, the first of which is that this is making an exception with no clear evidence, apart from mere opinion and thinking that it is good, and this is wrong. The second reason is that what the Muslims should do at times of war is to turn their hearts towards their Lord. Allah says (interpretation of the meaning):
“They ask you (O Muhammad) about the spoils of war. Say: ‘The spoils are for Allah and the Messenger.’ So fear Allah and adjust all matters of difference among you…” [al-Anfal 8:1]. But using music is the opposite of this idea of taqwa and it would distract them from remembering their Lord. Thirdly, using music is one of the customs of the kuffar, and it is not permitted to imitate them, especially with regard to something that Allah has forbidden to us in general, such as music. (al-Sahihah, 1/145)

• Story of the Abyssinians playing and singing in the Prophet’s mosque

Some of them used the hadith about the Abyssinians playing in the mosque of the Prophet as evidence that singing is allowed! Al-Bukhari included this hadith in his Sahih under the heading Bab al-Hirab wa’l-Daraq Yawm al-‘Eid (Chapter on Spears and Shields on the Day of Eid).
Al-Nawawi said: This indicates that it is permissible to play with weapons and the like in the mosque, and he applied that to other activities connected with jihad. (Sharh Muslim). But as al-Hafiz ibn Hajar said: whoever speaks about something which is not his profession will come up with weird ideas such as these.
Some of them use as evidence the hadith about the singing of the two young girls, which we have discussed above, but we will quote what Ibn al-Qayyim said:
I am amazed that you quote as evidence for allowing listening to sophisticated songs the report which we mentioned about how two young girls who were below the age of puberty sang to a young woman on the day of Eid some verses of Arab poetry about bravery in war and other noble characteristics. How can you compare this to that? What is strange is that this hadith is one of the strongest proofs against them. The greatest speaker of the truth [Abu Bakr al-Siddiq] called them musical instruments of the Shaytan, and the Messenger of Allah approved of that appellation, but he made an exception in the case of these two young girls who had not yet reached the age of responsibility and the words of whose songs could not corrupt anyone who listened to them. Can this be used as evidence to allow what you do and what you know of listening (to music) which includes (bad) things which are not hidden?! Subhan Allah! How people can be led astray!
Ibn al-Jawzi said: Aishah was young at that time; nothing was transmitted from her after she reached the age of puberty except condemnation of singing. Her brother’s son, al-Qasim ibn Muhammad, condemned singing and said that it was not allowed to listen to it, and he took his knowledge from her.
Al-Hafiz ibn Hajar said: A group of the Sufis used this hadith (the hadith about the two young girls) as evidence that singing is allowed and it is allowed to listen to it, whether it is accompanied by instruments or not. This view is sufficiently refuted by the clear statement of Aishah in the following hadith, where she says, “They were not singers.” She made it clear that they were not singers as such, although this may be understood from the wording of the report. So we should limit it to what was narrated in the text as regards the occasion and the manner, so as to reduce the risk of going against the principle, i.e., the hadith.

• Did the Companions listen to singing?

Some people even have the nerve to suggest that the Sahabah and Tabi'in listened to singing, and that they saw nothing wrong with it!
Al-Fawzan said: We demand them to show us sahih isnads going back to these Sahabah and Tabi'in, proving what they attribute to them. Then he said: Imam Muslim mentioned in his introduction to his Sahih that Abd-Allah ibn al-Mubarak said: The isnad is part of religion. Were it not for the isnad, whoever wanted to could say whatever he wanted to.

• Are the hadiths which forbid music full of faults?

Some of them said that the ahadith which forbid music are full of faults. No hadith was free of being criticized by some of the scholars. Ibn Baz said: The ahadith which were narrated concerning music being haram are not full of faults as has been claimed. Some of them are in Sahih al-Bukhari which is the soundest of books after the Book of Allah, and some of them are hasan and some are daif. But because they are so many, with different isnads, they constitute definitive proof that singing and musical instruments are haram.
All the imams agreed on the soundness of the ahadith which forbid singing and musical instruments, apart from Abu Hamid al-Ghazzali, but al-Ghazzali did not have knowledge of hadith; and Ibn Hazam, but al-Albani explained where Ibn Hazam went wrong, and Ibn Hazam himself said that if any of (these ahadith) were sahih, he would follow that. But now they have proof that these reports are sahih because there are so many books by the scholars which state that these ahadith are sahih, but they turn their backs on that. They are far more extreme than Ibn Hazam and they are nothing like him, for they are not qualified and cannot be referred to.

• Singing is haram only where alcohol is drunk?

Some of them said that the scholars forbade singing because it is mentioned alongside gatherings in which alcohol is drunk and where people stay up late at night for evil purposes.
Al-Shawkani said: The response to this is that mentioning these things in conjunction does not only mean that what is haram is what is joined together in this manner. Otherwise this would mean that zina, as mentioned in the ahadith, is not haram unless it is accompanied by alcohol and the use of musical instruments. By the same token, an ayah such as the following (interpretation of the meaning):
“Verily, he used not to believe in Allah, the Most Great, And urged not on the feeding of Al-Miskin (the poor). [al-Haqqah 69:33-34]
would imply that it is not haram to disbelieve in Allah unless that is accompanied by not encouraging the feeding of the poor. If it is said that the prohibition of such things one at a time is proven from other reports, the response to that is that the prohibition of musical instruments is also known from other evidence, as mentioned above.

• Idle talk does not refer to singing?

Some of them said that “idle talk” does not refer to singing; the refutation of that has been mentioned above. Al-Qurtubi said: This – the view that it means singing – is the best that has been said concerning this ayah, and Ibn Masud swore three times by Allah besides Whom there is no other god, that it does refer to singing. Then he mentioned other imams who said the same thing. Then he mentioned other views concerning the matter. Then he said: The first view is the best of all that has been said on this matter, because of the marfu’ hadith, and because of the view of the Sahabah and the Tabi'in. (Tafsir al-Qurtubi).
Ibn al-Qayyim, after quoting this Tafsir, said: Al-Hakim Abu Abd-Allah said in the Tafsir of Kitab al-Mustadrak: Let the one who is seeking this knowledge know that the Tafsir of a Sahabi who witnessed the revelation is a hadith with isnad according to the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhari and Muslim). Elsewhere in his book, he said: In our view this hadith has the same strength as a marfu’ report. Although their tafsir is still subject to further examination, it is still more readily acceptable than the tafsir of those who came after them, because they are the most knowledgeable among this ummah of what Allah meant in his Book. It was revealed among them and they were the first people to be addressed by it. They heard the tafsir from the Messenger in word and in deed. And they were Arabs who understood the true meanings of (Arabic) words, so Muslims should avoid resorting to any other interpretation as much as possible.

• Singing is a form of worship if it helps one to obey Allah?

Some of them said that singing is a form of worship if the intention is for it to help one to obey Allah!
Ibn al-Qayyim said: How strange! What type of faith, light, insight, guidance and knowledge can be gained from listening to tuneful verses and music in which most of what is said is haram and deserves the wrath and punishment of Allah and His Messenger? … How can anyone who has the least amount of insight and faith in his heart draw near to Allah and increase his faith by enjoying something which is hated by Him, and He detests the one who says it and the one who accepts it?
Ibn al-Qayyim said, discussing the state of the person who has gotten used to listening to singing: Hence you find that those who have gotten used to it and for whom it is like food and drink will never have the desire to listen to the Quran or feel joy when they hear it, and they never find in listening to its verses the same feeling that they find when listening to poetry. Indeed, if they hear the Quran, they hear it with an inattentive heart and talk whilst it is being recited, but if they hear whistling and clapping of hands, they lower their voices and keep still, and pay attention.

• Music softens people’s hearts?

Some say that music and musical instruments have the effect of softening people’s hearts and creating gentle feelings. This is not true, because it provokes physical desires and whims. If it really did what they say, it would have softened the hearts of the musicians and made their attitude and behaviour better, but most of them, as we know, are astray and behave badly.

Quoting from one of Ted Kaczynski's (the Unabomber's) journals:

Lately, to tell the truth, I’ve been getting a little sick of killing things. Neither the death struggles of the animal nor the blood bother me in the least; in fact, I rather enjoy the sight of blood; blood is appetizing because it makes rich soups. I enjoy the instant of the kill because it represents a success. But a moment afterward I often feel saddened that a thing so beautiful and full of life has suddenly been converted into just a piece of meat. Still, this is outweighed by the satisfaction of getting my food from the forest and mountain. Rabbits and grouse have beautiful eye; in both cases the whites don’t show and the iris’s are a lovely brown. And this grouse today I noticed that the pupil, black at first glance, is actually a deep blue, like clear, translucent blue glass.

Also, in a letter to his brother, Ted wrestled with the question of; 'is it a good thing that some people feel sad about the animals killed painfully by hunter-gatherers?'
For me, I think yes it is a good thing, I feel sad partly because I relate to hunter-gatherers as people who could be offered lessons in how to grow enough diversity of vegan food at their own desired level of technology such that they would not need to hunt. I also hope one day some people might be motivated to do that for them in a responsible way that only improves their quality of life.
I understand a meat eater might feel sad for many reasons also, even if for example it's just because we have higher level technology today such that we can potentially kill some animals faster today with less pain and less stress. But even though we have the means to blow up an animals head with exploding bullets without the animal ever seeing it coming doesn't mean we always use such methods, nor do I think it would justify cutting short the animal's interest to live.
I find some nihilists & primitivists like Ted's response to this question the most fascinating, they wish they could have been born into a world in which no one experienced sadness about killing animals, but this just feels like desiring a black and white world because it would help them make sense of their place in the universe.
Maybe they fear that if they said yes its good some people feel sad, that the only other track society would be left to go down is exterminating all carnivores and building robot carnivore imitations for entertainment.
However, I think there is a middle ground in simply relating to ourselves as an omnivore species who are intelligent enough to one day desire to build a global vegan social contract. Where among each other we decide that we generally wouldn't like to encourage in any of our fellow humans the act of breeding and killing other sentient animals. For reasons of; 'it has the strongly likely outcome of damaging to an unacceptable degree many people's ability to be compassionate with one another'. So, not an indictment on the subsistence hunter-gatherers and non-human animals who hunt to survive, but an aspirational future goal for humans.
Finally, here is the long meandering letter by Ted I mentioned for anyone curious:

I doubt that the pigmies have any guilt, conscious or otherwise, about killing animals. Guilt is a conflict between what we’re trained not to do and impulses that lead us to do it anyway. Apparently there is nothing in pygmy culture that leads them not to kill or inflict pain on animals. What the pygmies love and celebrate is their way of life, and they see no conflict between that and killing for meat; in fact, the hunting is an essential part of their way of life — they gotta eat. We tend to see a conflict there because we come from a world where there is a gross excess of people who even apart from hunting destroy the material world through their very presence in such numbers. But to the pygmies — until very recently anyway — there’s been no need for “conservation”. The forest is full of animals; with the pygmies primitive weapons and sparse population the question of exterminating the game never arises. The pygmies problem is to fill his belly. The civilized man can afford to feel sorry for wild animals because he can take his food for granted. Some psychologists claim that man is attracted to “death” as they call it. Certainly young men are attracted to action, violence, aggression, and that sort of thing. Note the amount of make-believe violence in the entertainment media — in spite of the fact that in our culture that sort of thing is considered bad and unwholesome and so forth. Since man has been a hunter for the last million years, it is possible that, like other predatory animals, he has some kind of a “killer instinct”. It would thus seem that the pygmies are just acting like perfectly good predatory animals. Why should they feel sorry for their prey any more than a hawk, a fox, or a leopard does? On the other hand, when a modern “sport” goes out with a high-powered rifle, you have a different situation. Some obvious differences are: much less skill is required with a rifle than with primitive weapons; the “sport” does it fun, not because he needs the meat; he is in a world where there are too many people and not enough wildlife, and a rifle makes it too easy to kill too many animals. Of course, the fish and game dept. will see to it that the animals don’t get exterminated, but this entails “wildlife management” — manipulation of nature which to me is even worse than extermination. Beyond that, while the pygmy lives in the wilderness and belongs to it, the “sport” is an alien intruder whose presence is a kind of desecration. In a sense, the sport hunter is a masturbator: His hunting is not the “real thing” — it’s not what hunting is for a primitive man — he is trying to satisfy an instinct in a debased and sordid way, just like when you rub your prick to crudely simulate what you really want, which is a love affair with a woman. Of course there’s nothing wrong with jagging off to relieve yourself when you get horny — it’s harmless. But — even apart from the question of depletion of wildlife — the presence of “sports” in the wilderness tends to spoil it for those who know better how to appreciate nature.
So, as I said, I see no reason why the pygmies should have any pity for the animals they kill — they gotta kill to eat anyway, so why make themselves uncomfortable by worrying about the animals pain? On the other hand, I did share your (and the author’s) adverse reaction to the account of the pygmies callousness toward animals. For one thing — much as I hate to admit it — my feelings probably have been influenced by the attitudes prevalent in our society; for another thing — and this too is probably in some way related to the social background — I am more ready to put myself in the position of, and see things from the point of view of, another being, such as an animal; finally — and this does not derive from the social background — I see wild animals as “good guys”, the ones who are on my side, in contrast to civilization and its forces (the bad guys), hence I tend to identify with the wild animals. Certainly I would be much less prone to have pity for a domestic animal than for a wild one. I kill rabbits and so forth because I need the meat, but (now more than formerly — youth tends to be callous) I always regret that something alive and beautiful has been turned into just a piece of meat. (Though when you’re hungry enough for meat, you don’t worry too much about that.)
If you wanted, you could perhaps justify the pygmies this way: The pygmy kills without compunction or pity in order to eat. The pygmy too has to die some day, but he isn’t afraid of that. Perhaps he’ll be killed some day by a leopard or a buffalo, but he doesn’t whine about it or ask the leopard or buffalo to have mercy on him. He is an animal like the others in the forest and he shares the hardships and dangers with the other animals. He lives in an amoral world. But it’s a free world and I would say a much wholesome and fulfilling world than that of modern civilization. I do share your negative emotional reaction to the pygmies’ ruthlessness, but I’m inclined to suspect that that reaction is perhaps a little decadent, and I don’t see that anything would be improved much by the pygmy’s vicariously sharing the sufferings of the animals he kills.
I mentioned the fact that the pygmies’ world is an amoral one and that such a world may be a wholesome world than the moral one of civilization. Note that amorality does not exclude generous behavior toward others: human beings have impulses of love and loyalty to one another and these are animal impulses, not products of morality. By morality I mean feelings of guilt and shame that we are trained to associate with certain actions that our instinctive impulses would otherwise lead us to perform. Of course it’s disagreeable to admit the extent to which we’ve been influenced by all that brainwashing--attitudes to which we are constantly exposed in school, in books, in the mass communicative media, etc. I hate to admit it, but — as I believe I mentioned to you once before — I would be incapable of premeditatedly committing a serious crime,{1} and the reason for this is simply that I am subject to the same trained-in inhibitions as most other people. I couldn’t commit a serious crime cause I’d be scared to — quite apart from the fear of getting caught. On an intellectual level I don’t believe in any moral code. To what extent is our aversion to the pygmies ruthlessness simply the result of our having been brainwashed? Now the point I want to make is this: One of the principile justifications — or rather rationalizations — given for moral training is that it promotes human welfare — we are better off if we don’t kill each other, steal from each other, etc. But what I would argue is that a strongly developed morality and system of inhibitions exacts a psychological price that is too much to pay for the added physical security. We would lead more fulfilling lives with less trained-in inhibitions even at the price of considerably less physical security. People who are habituated from childhood to a relatively unsafe mode of existence — such as primitive savages — don’t seem to mind it a bit. It doesn’t make them feel insecure. As for the price of inhibitions, I’ve read in more than one place that there is an inverse relation between murder and suicide statistics. Countries that have a high murder rate tend to have a low suicide rate and countries with a low murder rate tend to have a high suicide rate. This seems to suggest that people who are too inhibited about expressing aggression pay a high psychological price — for every one who commits suicide there are provably a great many who are miserable but never quite get to the point of stringing themselves up. Primitives are probably not wholly free of morality, but they are undoubtedly far less clamped down by moral inhibitions than we are. One thing I’ve noted in reading about very primitive people is that in many cases there seems to be a great deal of squabbling and quarrelling among them. This used to repel me, because like other people of our sort of background I’ve been trained to hold in the feelings that give rise to quarrelling. We have to be trained to do that because our machine-like society would function very poorly if workers got into a shouting match with the boss or their fellow-workers every time they got pissed off about something. Our society requires order above all else: But I don’t see why primitive societies should be regarded as worse than ours because of this quarelsomeness. Unquestionably the resentments and jealousness are present in our society — the only difference is that they are not usually expressed openly. They come out as snide remarks made behind someones back or in other pettiness, or (perhaps worse) they are just held in, where they fester. Probably the primitives do better to openly express their annoyances and resentments. Well, I could go on forever pursuing the ramifications of this — I could bring in personal loyalty among the Somalis, political corruption in Latin America ... but I guess I’ve rambled on long enough. Also, I did a sloppy job of expressing all this, but I don’t want to spend forever writing this letter, so fuck it.
{1} [Note from one of Ted’s coded journals: “I recently wrote in a letter to my brother that the inhibitions that have been trained into me are too strong to permit me ever to commit a serious crime. This may surprise the reader considering some things reported in these notes, but motive is clear. I want to avoid any possible suspicion on my brothers part.”]

There's no doubt Alan Keating is a poker celebrity. People like watching him play.
But those who think he's a super secret shark going undercover for the stream are utterly delusional. If it looks like a whale, talks like a whale, and thinks like a whale... There's only one reasonable conclusion.
Here are some quotes from a recent interview with Joe Ingram. It's obvious Alan is just a nice guy, who is essentially a degenerate gambler. He doesn't think about poker like a professional. He just likes having fun with his inheritance.
Joe: How do you stay composed? How do you not go off the deep end?
Alan: I don't know. I do go off the deep end. If I'm down a lot, I'm gonna turn up the size of the pots, I'm going to try to bloat everything. I'm going to try to get back. I don't think it's the best strategy. It’s an emotional thing, I don't have control over that as well as I should. I'm not necessarily thinking of how to make the most money or avoid losing the most money.
Joe: Interesting. That’s a very different mindset. A professional is going to say, I only want to make the most winning play at all times. And if I’m not making the most plus EV play, I’m going to shame myself.
Alan: Yeah, no. A lot of the times, when I’m getting reraised, or I’m playing a pot, I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be fun if I hit? Plus, I try to carry an attitude towards the deck, that there’s some sort of relationship. If you trust the deck, maybe it will work in your favor.
Joe: Do you feel like that spiritual approach pays off for you? Does it work?
Alan: I think it only pays off if others start to believe it. Like, when it comes to flips, I go into it like, I’m really good at flipping. And it becomes a thing, and people believe it.
Joe: Are you a flip God? What’s the deal with these flips?
Alan: I just love ‘em. You can use them to calm yourself down, or calm someone else down. Like, Thomas lost the first day. And he had just lot a big hand. He’s in a vulnerable spot for the next half hour, or hour. He’s going to over gamble. If he loses two days in a row, that’s not great. So I asked him if he wanted to flip for 25k on red or black. It’s a tool, I wanted to help distract him and help him get out of it.
Joe: So you’re saying, if a player starts to go on tilt, you want to help him get out of it? Interesting. That’s an anti-approach. When most people see a guy on tilt, they see blood in the water.
Alan: Well, what are you trying to accomplish? Say he has two bad sessions, loses a lot of money. Is he going to feel good about that experience? If you keep a game together, where you don’t harp on the guys who are down, and attack the guys who are up, there’s an influence on the dynamic of the table. It’s in the back of my head.
Joe: So you play softer against some players?
Alan: Yep, and I play harder against some others. Who ever is up the most, or is playing the tightest. I play hardest against them.
Joe: How do recover after losing a big pot?
Alan: Just get to the next hand. I don’t know man… Now I’m going to take more risk for the next half hour, and try to do something.
Joe: What’s the deal with Dwan? He didn’t play on Friday. It seems like you guys get along well.
Alan: I mean, I’ve only played with him four or five times. We have different groups. But I really enjoyed playing with him, especially the first day when Steve was telling jokes and it was lighthearted. But Dwan played all four days right?
Joe: Ya, he came in late on the last day. Why didn’t he start?
Alan: I think Rahul came in, instead of him. That’s my guess. I don’t know for sure, because I didn’t know Rahul was playing until he sat down.
Joe: Well, I was saying in my recap show, do I want Rahul and Thomas in the game, or do I want Tom Dwan in the game? If I’m putting the game together, I’m probably going to put in the big losers. But at the same time, it’s a big show, it’s on YouTube. People obviously love Tom Dwan, he’s one of the biggest names of all time. They want to see him in the game. Do you have a history with Dwan? What’s your read on his poker?
Alan: He’s a great player, I love being around him. But when it comes to the seats, there are seven seats. It’s prime real estate. Everyone wants to be in them. It’s all part of the balancing act that Hustler has to negotiate.
Joe: I felt really bad for Texas Mike, he had a heart issue. On the third day, he got destroyed. He lost a couple million. You and him played a crazy hand where you snap called a million dollar hand with Ace Queen. What the hell were you thinking?
Alan: That’s a trust the deck situation, haha. You gotta keep your eyes out for that kind of stuff. But to answer your question. There were a series of hands we played together, where the deck hits me. And you kind of feel that tension growing between the two of you, and you can just feel it, something’s going to come to a head. And in that hand, he was down, so I knew he was going to push it. I was up a ton, and I had given most of it back, so I was ready to gamble. In this situation, it’s just two maniacs. Ace Queen suited is Aces, in that moment. It feels like it to me. I just kinda knew I was gonna win it. And he just knew he was gonna lose it. He was just pushing chips over, shaking his head. Before the board even came out, it’s not a lose-lose situation… But a situation where I’m not going to be really happy no matter what happens. Because we’re running it once. Either I’m going to lose, and I’m going to go from being up two million to down something. And, I’ve seen this before. The gates are open. I could go off for some stupid number now. Or, I win this hand. He’s now down like 3 million. And he’s leaving, I’m not going to feel amazing in that situation. I’m not going to be happy when I lose, but when I win, I’m not going to be fully happy either.
Joe: It’s kind of unfortunate. People’s perception of your life and ability is shaped by what they see publicly. Poker is all about results. If you play on a show, and you’re losing… This guy sucks, get this guy out of here, he has a gambling problem, he’s an addict. When we watch people on TV, we don’t know them at all.
Alan: That can upset people. If you’re out there gambling, playing dumb hands, and losing, that upsets some people. Because they think that you’re disrespecting the money. Who do you think you are?
Joe: Have people ever said that to you? In your life, when they see you play, and make some plays they don’t agree with?
Alan: Yeah, some people have messaged me, Are you all right? How you’re playing is horrific, you need to stop playing. That’s happened. But, they only see what’s there. I’ve had some bad years, especially recently. But I’m not at a spot where it’s going to put me out of the game. Having lost for 3 years straight, it was definitely a learning experience, because before then, I had won for years. There’s a difficulty in understanding what it’s like to just get pummeled for years. And I think I’ve had the opportunity to understand both, so I’m empathetic to the guy who’s lost a lot, and I understand the guy who’s won a lot. In my ideal world, no one would win a ton or lose a ton.
Joe: Interesting. We’re getting inside the mind of Keating. The way you think about poker, is not what I expected. Everybody asks, What’s the deal with this guy Alan Keating? And I don’t know, I’m not really sure. He’s always nice to me, always been respectful. I see him out, he’s always having a good time, likes to play poker.
Alan: We should all come together. There are people that want to see different styles of poker. Some people don’t like how I play, they think it’s trash, it’s not real poker. They want to see some tougher, better players play each other, and that’s cool. That’s all poker too. But…
Joe: That’s the world we play in now. People are playing more hands. Not everyone plays GTO. Especially in these livestreams, nothing GTO is happening.
Alan: I don’t know how to enjoy the hard parts of poker, where you’re studying, and getting down to it. I kind of relate it to chess. I like chess, but I only like it to pull up an app, play. I don’t want to learn the openings, I don’t want to do any of that stuff. I just want to mess around. And it’s kind of the same for poker. I have my own way of playing. But it doesn’t really fit into the highest end stuff. I just know that I’m never going to be a very competitive player, and I don’t want to spend the time to be. I just want to kind of have fun with my friends.

Quoting from one of Ted Kaczynski's (the Unabomber's) journals:

Lately, to tell the truth, I’ve been getting a little sick of killing things. Neither the death struggles of the animal nor the blood bother me in the least; in fact, I rather enjoy the sight of blood; blood is appetizing because it makes rich soups. I enjoy the instant of the kill because it represents a success. But a moment afterward I often feel saddened that a thing so beautiful and full of life has suddenly been converted into just a piece of meat. Still, this is outweighed by the satisfaction of getting my food from the forest and mountain. Rabbits and grouse have beautiful eye; in both cases the whites don’t show and the iris’s are a lovely brown. And this grouse today I noticed that the pupil, black at first glance, is actually a deep blue, like clear, translucent blue glass.

Also, in a letter to his brother, Ted wrestled with the question of; 'is it a good thing that some people feel sad about the animals killed painfully by hunter-gatherers?'
For me, I think yes it is a good thing, I feel sad partly because I relate to hunter-gatherers as people who could be offered lessons in how to grow enough diversity of vegan food at their own desired level of technology such that they would not need to hunt. I also hope one day some people might be motivated to do that for them in a responsible way that only improves their quality of life.
I understand a meat eater might feel sad for many reasons also, even if for example it's just because we have higher level technology today such that we can potentially kill some animals faster today with less pain and less stress. But even though we have the means to blow up an animals head with exploding bullets without the animal ever seeing it coming doesn't mean we always use such methods, nor do I think it would justify cutting short the animal's interest to live.
I find some nihilists & primitivists like Ted's response to this question the most fascinating, they wish they could have been born into a world in which no one experienced sadness about killing animals, but this just feels like desiring a black and white world because it would help them make sense of their place in the universe.
Maybe they fear that if they said yes its good some people feel sad, that the only other track society would be left to go down is exterminating all carnivores and building robot carnivore imitations for entertainment.
However, I think there is a middle ground in simply relating to ourselves as an omnivore species who are intelligent enough to one day desire to build a global vegan social contract. Where among each other we decide that we generally wouldn't like to encourage in any of our fellow humans the act of breeding and killing other sentient animals. For reasons of; 'it has the strongly likely outcome of damaging to an unacceptable degree many people's ability to be compassionate with one another'. So, not an indictment on the subsistence hunter-gatherers and non-human animals who hunt to survive, but an aspirational future goal for humans.
Finally, here is the long meandering letter by Ted I mentioned for anyone curious:

I doubt that the pigmies have any guilt, conscious or otherwise, about killing animals. Guilt is a conflict between what we’re trained not to do and impulses that lead us to do it anyway. Apparently there is nothing in pygmy culture that leads them not to kill or inflict pain on animals. What the pygmies love and celebrate is their way of life, and they see no conflict between that and killing for meat; in fact, the hunting is an essential part of their way of life — they gotta eat. We tend to see a conflict there because we come from a world where there is a gross excess of people who even apart from hunting destroy the material world through their very presence in such numbers. But to the pygmies — until very recently anyway — there’s been no need for “conservation”. The forest is full of animals; with the pygmies primitive weapons and sparse population the question of exterminating the game never arises. The pygmies problem is to fill his belly. The civilized man can afford to feel sorry for wild animals because he can take his food for granted. Some psychologists claim that man is attracted to “death” as they call it. Certainly young men are attracted to action, violence, aggression, and that sort of thing. Note the amount of make-believe violence in the entertainment media — in spite of the fact that in our culture that sort of thing is considered bad and unwholesome and so forth. Since man has been a hunter for the last million years, it is possible that, like other predatory animals, he has some kind of a “killer instinct”. It would thus seem that the pygmies are just acting like perfectly good predatory animals. Why should they feel sorry for their prey any more than a hawk, a fox, or a leopard does? On the other hand, when a modern “sport” goes out with a high-powered rifle, you have a different situation. Some obvious differences are: much less skill is required with a rifle than with primitive weapons; the “sport” does it fun, not because he needs the meat; he is in a world where there are too many people and not enough wildlife, and a rifle makes it too easy to kill too many animals. Of course, the fish and game dept. will see to it that the animals don’t get exterminated, but this entails “wildlife management” — manipulation of nature which to me is even worse than extermination. Beyond that, while the pygmy lives in the wilderness and belongs to it, the “sport” is an alien intruder whose presence is a kind of desecration. In a sense, the sport hunter is a masturbator: His hunting is not the “real thing” — it’s not what hunting is for a primitive man — he is trying to satisfy an instinct in a debased and sordid way, just like when you rub your prick to crudely simulate what you really want, which is a love affair with a woman. Of course there’s nothing wrong with jagging off to relieve yourself when you get horny — it’s harmless. But — even apart from the question of depletion of wildlife — the presence of “sports” in the wilderness tends to spoil it for those who know better how to appreciate nature.
So, as I said, I see no reason why the pygmies should have any pity for the animals they kill — they gotta kill to eat anyway, so why make themselves uncomfortable by worrying about the animals pain? On the other hand, I did share your (and the author’s) adverse reaction to the account of the pygmies callousness toward animals. For one thing — much as I hate to admit it — my feelings probably have been influenced by the attitudes prevalent in our society; for another thing — and this too is probably in some way related to the social background — I am more ready to put myself in the position of, and see things from the point of view of, another being, such as an animal; finally — and this does not derive from the social background — I see wild animals as “good guys”, the ones who are on my side, in contrast to civilization and its forces (the bad guys), hence I tend to identify with the wild animals. Certainly I would be much less prone to have pity for a domestic animal than for a wild one. I kill rabbits and so forth because I need the meat, but (now more than formerly — youth tends to be callous) I always regret that something alive and beautiful has been turned into just a piece of meat. (Though when you’re hungry enough for meat, you don’t worry too much about that.)
If you wanted, you could perhaps justify the pygmies this way: The pygmy kills without compunction or pity in order to eat. The pygmy too has to die some day, but he isn’t afraid of that. Perhaps he’ll be killed some day by a leopard or a buffalo, but he doesn’t whine about it or ask the leopard or buffalo to have mercy on him. He is an animal like the others in the forest and he shares the hardships and dangers with the other animals. He lives in an amoral world. But it’s a free world and I would say a much wholesome and fulfilling world than that of modern civilization. I do share your negative emotional reaction to the pygmies’ ruthlessness, but I’m inclined to suspect that that reaction is perhaps a little decadent, and I don’t see that anything would be improved much by the pygmy’s vicariously sharing the sufferings of the animals he kills.
I mentioned the fact that the pygmies’ world is an amoral one and that such a world may be a wholesome world than the moral one of civilization. Note that amorality does not exclude generous behavior toward others: human beings have impulses of love and loyalty to one another and these are animal impulses, not products of morality. By morality I mean feelings of guilt and shame that we are trained to associate with certain actions that our instinctive impulses would otherwise lead us to perform. Of course it’s disagreeable to admit the extent to which we’ve been influenced by all that brainwashing--attitudes to which we are constantly exposed in school, in books, in the mass communicative media, etc. I hate to admit it, but — as I believe I mentioned to you once before — I would be incapable of premeditatedly committing a serious crime,{1} and the reason for this is simply that I am subject to the same trained-in inhibitions as most other people. I couldn’t commit a serious crime cause I’d be scared to — quite apart from the fear of getting caught. On an intellectual level I don’t believe in any moral code. To what extent is our aversion to the pygmies ruthlessness simply the result of our having been brainwashed? Now the point I want to make is this: One of the principile justifications — or rather rationalizations — given for moral training is that it promotes human welfare — we are better off if we don’t kill each other, steal from each other, etc. But what I would argue is that a strongly developed morality and system of inhibitions exacts a psychological price that is too much to pay for the added physical security. We would lead more fulfilling lives with less trained-in inhibitions even at the price of considerably less physical security. People who are habituated from childhood to a relatively unsafe mode of existence — such as primitive savages — don’t seem to mind it a bit. It doesn’t make them feel insecure. As for the price of inhibitions, I’ve read in more than one place that there is an inverse relation between murder and suicide statistics. Countries that have a high murder rate tend to have a low suicide rate and countries with a low murder rate tend to have a high suicide rate. This seems to suggest that people who are too inhibited about expressing aggression pay a high psychological price — for every one who commits suicide there are provably a great many who are miserable but never quite get to the point of stringing themselves up. Primitives are probably not wholly free of morality, but they are undoubtedly far less clamped down by moral inhibitions than we are. One thing I’ve noted in reading about very primitive people is that in many cases there seems to be a great deal of squabbling and quarrelling among them. This used to repel me, because like other people of our sort of background I’ve been trained to hold in the feelings that give rise to quarrelling. We have to be trained to do that because our machine-like society would function very poorly if workers got into a shouting match with the boss or their fellow-workers every time they got pissed off about something. Our society requires order above all else: But I don’t see why primitive societies should be regarded as worse than ours because of this quarelsomeness. Unquestionably the resentments and jealousness are present in our society — the only difference is that they are not usually expressed openly. They come out as snide remarks made behind someones back or in other pettiness, or (perhaps worse) they are just held in, where they fester. Probably the primitives do better to openly express their annoyances and resentments. Well, I could go on forever pursuing the ramifications of this — I could bring in personal loyalty among the Somalis, political corruption in Latin America ... but I guess I’ve rambled on long enough. Also, I did a sloppy job of expressing all this, but I don’t want to spend forever writing this letter, so fuck it.
{1} [Note from one of Ted’s coded journals: “I recently wrote in a letter to my brother that the inhibitions that have been trained into me are too strong to permit me ever to commit a serious crime. This may surprise the reader considering some things reported in these notes, but motive is clear. I want to avoid any possible suspicion on my brothers part.”]

Let me start off my saying that this is not my revenge or my story, but it is one I witnessed decades ago.
One thing you need to know is that certain subsections of horse riding disciplines make Dance Moms look sane and well-adjusted. I was in one of them for a long time. It was really common for families with sisters to have a starter pony that was passed down from the older to the younger.
This particular pair of sisters I'll call Tina and Louise. (12 & 6 yo, respectively) Like their namesakes from Bob's Burgers, Tina was sweet and awkward while Louise had a much bigger and more mischievous personality. In a sport dominated by petty bitches, they were always nice to me. They practiced hard but were never bad sports.
Another pair of sisters, whom I'll call Tammy and Jocelyn (14 and 13ish), were the exact opposite. Spoiled brats who hopped on the ($20k+) horse warmed up by their trainer only to throw a fit at 3rd place and demand their father replace the horse with a newer, better one.
The one pony that they refused to let their parents sell was their "starter." (In quotes because this pony was a cool $30k) Now for all their faults, Tammy and Jocelyn loved this pony. But it was a fabulous show pony who loved to jump and deserved to have a kid to pack around in the decades before he needed to be retired. Finally, their parents laid down the law and said that they would have to sell Pretty Pony in order to get both of them their next level of show horse. Pretty Pony would have been sold for a cool $20k still, as they kept him in good shape and he was a very nice pony.
Now this made Tammy and Jocelyn have an attitude at the barn for a while. I don't have time for every example, but they would call other people's horses ugly, would purposefully move fences while people were trying to practice, etc. The coaches got them together and they knocked it off in general. But then they set their sights on Tina, who still had her starter pony. (He was going to be retired to their home property to be a lawn mower once Louise outgrew him, not like Pretty Pony with many years and trophies ahead of him)
Now, this next part was told to me later, but I wish I had seen the fallout in person.
Tina was a tough little thing, she never responded or even told on them. Apparently they would sit on the edge of the arena where no one could hear them and call her fat, uncoordinated, etc, as she passed during training. (Tina was a rockstar equitation rider by the way, meaning that form, pattern work, and her seat were her specialty. I think she didn't tell on them because she knew what they were saying was categorically untrue.)
What they didn't realize was that Louise, like most 6 year olds set loose at a barn, was running around and paying attention to everything. She overheard them bullying her sister. She also knew that they would not have two show horses (one for each sister) if they did not sell Pretty Pony.
She also knew where the grooming supplies were. The super sharp clippers and hair shears. She had been around horses her whole life. Pretty Pony was also very well trained (at $30k you better f*cking be), and knew to stand still for grooming.
In a matter of less than thirty minutes, the amount of time left in the lesson that was going on, Louise executed her plan. She hacked away every bit of his mane. I was told they had to "roach it" later. (Completely buzz off) She randomly chopped at his gorgeous thick tail and took feet of hair off. She played innocent when someone caught her, but the damage was done.
Now here's the thing about selling horses; any little thing will add to or subtract from the price. If they had tried to sell Pretty Pony with his awful weed whacker haircut, it would have been for literally half the price they were hoping for. So they had to wait almost a year for his mane and tail to grow back fully.
Apparently the meltdown Tammy and Jocelyn had when they saw him was spectacular. The meltdown they had when they realized they were going to have to decide who got to show that upcoming season was legendary.
Louise did get in trouble, some, but mostly the barn focused on not letting children be unsupervised anymore. The adults and coaches all got onto each other more than anything else. Tammy and Jocelyn ended up not showing that season, but they also gave Tina and Louise a very wide berth.
Before you get too concerned about Pretty Pony, he was fine. He had flysheets to protect him from bugs until his mane and tail grew back. He got sold to a lovely family who truly appreciated his talents. At least four kids I know of were taught to ride by this pony, he was very expensive for a reason and it was great to see him so loved. When I saw him in his retirement he was a vaguely pony-shaped ball of fat mowing the grass at their home.
So, moral of the story: if you're going to depreciate someone's asset by $10-15k, make sure to do it when you're 6 so that the adults will blame themselves for not watching you. Oh, and younger siblings are psychopaths.

So, here's the deal: I work at a dispensary, and we have strict closing times. Today, as we were closing up shop, I politely asked my coworker if he could help keep customers out past closing time, as we're not supposed to dispense after a certain hour. Well, things escalated quickly. He got all defensive and started treating me and the other associates with passive-aggressiveness.
I was genuinely confused by his reaction, so I asked our manager what was up. My coworker accused me of "bossing" him around. I was taken aback because I was just trying to ensure we followed company policy. My manager brushed it off as my coworker being himself, and told me not to worry about it.
Later, when we crossed paths again, I tried to clear the air by asking if we were cool. Initially, he seemed okay, but then he pulled a complete 180 and accused me of throwing things around, even though I was just cleaning up the mess in front of him.
I decided to disengage and walk away, but then he dared to claim that I was the one with the problem. That's when I snapped and told him not to gaslight me, especially since he had been trying to convince me that I was bossing him around, which simply isn't true. The other associate confirmed with me that I was not bossing him around. My husband when I got home also reassured me that it seemed like I was dealing with a quote-on-quote snowflake. This employee has a history of picking stupid fights with people and getting entitled over who tells him anything. Something I'm not used to because I'm not from the same generation.
Now, I'm left wondering: Am I the asshole here? Was I out of line for confronting him about his behavior, or was I justified in defending myself against his accusations and passive-aggressive attitude?

Hey wanted to get other people's opinion on the matter before actually committing to the report. Also I work at a licensed store location. Today I was working and maybe 20 minutes into my shift everytime I would go to a certain point in the kiosk it would smell of burning plastic. I thought I was going crazy so I ask my coworker to switch on the bar just to see if they could smell it. The minute they walked over instantly smelled it and asked what that was and if I could smell it. I then reassured them and I need to see if I wasn't crazy. I tell my front end supervisor and she gets concerned and instantly drops what she is doing and goes to check it out. She is not even all the way in the kiosk and instantly smelled it so she calls the ASD ( assistant store director ) who is in the office upstairs and let's him know the problem he comes down. Moves a few things and says nothing is hot and nothing looks burnt so I guess I'll put in a work ticket for the water filter (we all assumed it was that since that's the only thing in the area) he leaves. Here's where it starts getting weird both me and my other coworker start feeling lightheaded and nauseous we bring it up to the same supervisor and she's tells us to step outside of the kiosk to get air. We tell her our symptoms and she brings it up to our ASD again he says he already put in the work order nothing else he can do. She's got upset with that response. We continue our shift my coworker goes on lunch so I'm stuck in the kiosk inhaling this smell the whole time they are gone because there was a rush and I'm progressively feeling worst. I finally get the rush done and I'm outside the store literally fanning myself and trying to intake as much fresh air as I can. I tell my supervisor again (mind you I keep bringing it up to this supervisor because she is not only the closest person in power near me but is also the only one taking us seriously.) And she gets upset and basically rips our ASD a new one because he is not showing any concern and two people are getting sick because of this smell and he is not even offering us any assistance or making it urgent to the maintenance that they need to get this checked out. He then tells her actual quote "you can tell her if she is really feeling THAT sick when (coworkers name) comes back she can go home if she really wants to." With attitude and all. This is also the same man who guilt tripped me into coming in when I told him I was going to the emergency room for my hip and told me it would be an unexcused absence(that's a whole different rant) But other than that all he was did was tell us to try putting on a mask and brought us a fan after my supervisor kept nagging him to help us in some way.
I just feel like it was really poor management and he just simply did not care for us at all nor once asked us himself how we were feeling if we needed anything he just kept telling our supervisor to speak for him. I feel like that is not how some in his power should be treating his employees
Also in case anyone is wondering the reason we had to speak to him and not our actual store director was because it was her day off or else I would not be writing this post because she actually cares for the employees in her store.
I really hope to hear some opinions and/or encouragement if I shocks go through with this report to either our store director or our union representative.

Quoting from one of Ted Kaczynski's (the Unabomber's) journals:

Lately, to tell the truth, I’ve been getting a little sick of killing things. Neither the death struggles of the animal nor the blood bother me in the least; in fact, I rather enjoy the sight of blood; blood is appetizing because it makes rich soups. I enjoy the instant of the kill because it represents a success. But a moment afterward I often feel saddened that a thing so beautiful and full of life has suddenly been converted into just a piece of meat. Still, this is outweighed by the satisfaction of getting my food from the forest and mountain. Rabbits and grouse have beautiful eye; in both cases the whites don’t show and the iris’s are a lovely brown. And this grouse today I noticed that the pupil, black at first glance, is actually a deep blue, like clear, translucent blue glass.

Also, in a letter to his brother, Ted wrestled with the question of; 'is it a good thing that some people feel sad about the animals killed painfully by hunter-gatherers?'
For me, I think yes it is a good thing, I feel sad partly because I relate to hunter-gatherers as people who could be offered lessons in how to grow enough diversity of vegan food at their own desired level of technology such that they would not need to hunt. I also hope one day some people might be motivated to do that for them in a responsible way that only improves their quality of life.
I understand a meat eater might feel sad for many reasons also, even if for example it's just because we have higher level technology today such that we can potentially kill some animals faster today with less pain and less stress. But even though we have the means to blow up an animals head with exploding bullets without the animal ever seeing it coming doesn't mean we always use such methods, nor do I think it would justify cutting short the animal's interest to live.
I find some nihilists & primitivists like Ted's response to this question the most fascinating, they wish they could have been born into a world in which no one experienced sadness about killing animals, but this just feels like desiring a black and white world because it would help them make sense of their place in the universe.
Maybe they fear that if they said yes its good some people feel sad, that the only other track society would be left to go down is exterminating all carnivores and building robot carnivore imitations for entertainment.
However, I think there is a middle ground in simply relating to ourselves as an omnivore species who are intelligent enough to one day desire to build a global vegan social contract. Where among each other we decide that we generally wouldn't like to encourage in any of our fellow humans the act of breeding and killing other sentient animals. For reasons of; 'it has the strongly likely outcome of damaging to an unacceptable degree many people's ability to be compassionate with one another'. So, not an indictment on the subsistence hunter-gatherers and non-human animals who hunt to survive, but an aspirational future goal for humans.
Finally, here is the long meandering letter by Ted I mentioned for anyone curious:

I doubt that the pigmies have any guilt, conscious or otherwise, about killing animals. Guilt is a conflict between what we’re trained not to do and impulses that lead us to do it anyway. Apparently there is nothing in pygmy culture that leads them not to kill or inflict pain on animals. What the pygmies love and celebrate is their way of life, and they see no conflict between that and killing for meat; in fact, the hunting is an essential part of their way of life — they gotta eat. We tend to see a conflict there because we come from a world where there is a gross excess of people who even apart from hunting destroy the material world through their very presence in such numbers. But to the pygmies — until very recently anyway — there’s been no need for “conservation”. The forest is full of animals; with the pygmies primitive weapons and sparse population the question of exterminating the game never arises. The pygmies problem is to fill his belly. The civilized man can afford to feel sorry for wild animals because he can take his food for granted. Some psychologists claim that man is attracted to “death” as they call it. Certainly young men are attracted to action, violence, aggression, and that sort of thing. Note the amount of make-believe violence in the entertainment media — in spite of the fact that in our culture that sort of thing is considered bad and unwholesome and so forth. Since man has been a hunter for the last million years, it is possible that, like other predatory animals, he has some kind of a “killer instinct”. It would thus seem that the pygmies are just acting like perfectly good predatory animals. Why should they feel sorry for their prey any more than a hawk, a fox, or a leopard does? On the other hand, when a modern “sport” goes out with a high-powered rifle, you have a different situation. Some obvious differences are: much less skill is required with a rifle than with primitive weapons; the “sport” does it fun, not because he needs the meat; he is in a world where there are too many people and not enough wildlife, and a rifle makes it too easy to kill too many animals. Of course, the fish and game dept. will see to it that the animals don’t get exterminated, but this entails “wildlife management” — manipulation of nature which to me is even worse than extermination. Beyond that, while the pygmy lives in the wilderness and belongs to it, the “sport” is an alien intruder whose presence is a kind of desecration. In a sense, the sport hunter is a masturbator: His hunting is not the “real thing” — it’s not what hunting is for a primitive man — he is trying to satisfy an instinct in a debased and sordid way, just like when you rub your prick to crudely simulate what you really want, which is a love affair with a woman. Of course there’s nothing wrong with jagging off to relieve yourself when you get horny — it’s harmless. But — even apart from the question of depletion of wildlife — the presence of “sports” in the wilderness tends to spoil it for those who know better how to appreciate nature.
So, as I said, I see no reason why the pygmies should have any pity for the animals they kill — they gotta kill to eat anyway, so why make themselves uncomfortable by worrying about the animals pain? On the other hand, I did share your (and the author’s) adverse reaction to the account of the pygmies callousness toward animals. For one thing — much as I hate to admit it — my feelings probably have been influenced by the attitudes prevalent in our society; for another thing — and this too is probably in some way related to the social background — I am more ready to put myself in the position of, and see things from the point of view of, another being, such as an animal; finally — and this does not derive from the social background — I see wild animals as “good guys”, the ones who are on my side, in contrast to civilization and its forces (the bad guys), hence I tend to identify with the wild animals. Certainly I would be much less prone to have pity for a domestic animal than for a wild one. I kill rabbits and so forth because I need the meat, but (now more than formerly — youth tends to be callous) I always regret that something alive and beautiful has been turned into just a piece of meat. (Though when you’re hungry enough for meat, you don’t worry too much about that.)
If you wanted, you could perhaps justify the pygmies this way: The pygmy kills without compunction or pity in order to eat. The pygmy too has to die some day, but he isn’t afraid of that. Perhaps he’ll be killed some day by a leopard or a buffalo, but he doesn’t whine about it or ask the leopard or buffalo to have mercy on him. He is an animal like the others in the forest and he shares the hardships and dangers with the other animals. He lives in an amoral world. But it’s a free world and I would say a much wholesome and fulfilling world than that of modern civilization. I do share your negative emotional reaction to the pygmies’ ruthlessness, but I’m inclined to suspect that that reaction is perhaps a little decadent, and I don’t see that anything would be improved much by the pygmy’s vicariously sharing the sufferings of the animals he kills.
I mentioned the fact that the pygmies’ world is an amoral one and that such a world may be a wholesome world than the moral one of civilization. Note that amorality does not exclude generous behavior toward others: human beings have impulses of love and loyalty to one another and these are animal impulses, not products of morality. By morality I mean feelings of guilt and shame that we are trained to associate with certain actions that our instinctive impulses would otherwise lead us to perform. Of course it’s disagreeable to admit the extent to which we’ve been influenced by all that brainwashing--attitudes to which we are constantly exposed in school, in books, in the mass communicative media, etc. I hate to admit it, but — as I believe I mentioned to you once before — I would be incapable of premeditatedly committing a serious crime,{1} and the reason for this is simply that I am subject to the same trained-in inhibitions as most other people. I couldn’t commit a serious crime cause I’d be scared to — quite apart from the fear of getting caught. On an intellectual level I don’t believe in any moral code. To what extent is our aversion to the pygmies ruthlessness simply the result of our having been brainwashed? Now the point I want to make is this: One of the principile justifications — or rather rationalizations — given for moral training is that it promotes human welfare — we are better off if we don’t kill each other, steal from each other, etc. But what I would argue is that a strongly developed morality and system of inhibitions exacts a psychological price that is too much to pay for the added physical security. We would lead more fulfilling lives with less trained-in inhibitions even at the price of considerably less physical security. People who are habituated from childhood to a relatively unsafe mode of existence — such as primitive savages — don’t seem to mind it a bit. It doesn’t make them feel insecure. As for the price of inhibitions, I’ve read in more than one place that there is an inverse relation between murder and suicide statistics. Countries that have a high murder rate tend to have a low suicide rate and countries with a low murder rate tend to have a high suicide rate. This seems to suggest that people who are too inhibited about expressing aggression pay a high psychological price — for every one who commits suicide there are provably a great many who are miserable but never quite get to the point of stringing themselves up. Primitives are probably not wholly free of morality, but they are undoubtedly far less clamped down by moral inhibitions than we are. One thing I’ve noted in reading about very primitive people is that in many cases there seems to be a great deal of squabbling and quarrelling among them. This used to repel me, because like other people of our sort of background I’ve been trained to hold in the feelings that give rise to quarrelling. We have to be trained to do that because our machine-like society would function very poorly if workers got into a shouting match with the boss or their fellow-workers every time they got pissed off about something. Our society requires order above all else: But I don’t see why primitive societies should be regarded as worse than ours because of this quarelsomeness. Unquestionably the resentments and jealousness are present in our society — the only difference is that they are not usually expressed openly. They come out as snide remarks made behind someones back or in other pettiness, or (perhaps worse) they are just held in, where they fester. Probably the primitives do better to openly express their annoyances and resentments. Well, I could go on forever pursuing the ramifications of this — I could bring in personal loyalty among the Somalis, political corruption in Latin America ... but I guess I’ve rambled on long enough. Also, I did a sloppy job of expressing all this, but I don’t want to spend forever writing this letter, so fuck it.
{1} [Note from one of Ted’s coded journals: “I recently wrote in a letter to my brother that the inhibitions that have been trained into me are too strong to permit me ever to commit a serious crime. This may surprise the reader considering some things reported in these notes, but motive is clear. I want to avoid any possible suspicion on my brothers part.”]

Carl von Clausewitz

01 June 1780 to 16 November 1831
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Carl von Clausewitz’s Moral Science of Warfare
Saturday 01 June 2024 is the 244th anniversary of the birth of Carl von Clausewitz (01 June 1780 to 16 November 1831), who was born on this date in Burg bei Magdeburg in 1780. (Wikipedia says that Clausewitz was born on the first of July, rather than June, but it’s possible to find pictures of Clausewitz’s grave marker, which gives his birth date as the first of June, so I will take this date as definitive.)
Clausewitz is remembered as the philosopher of war, and I have many times said that the philosophy of war and the philosophy of history are close cousins. If we hold that war is the motor that drives history forward, which many philosophers have argued, then was is the causal mechanism by which history is realized. Hegel and Marx in particular are associated with this view. We could even say that war is the reality of which history is the appearance.
And Clausewitz knew war. It was during the Napoleonic Wars that Clausewitz experienced his baptism by fire, so that his book On War is an account of war during the Napoleonic wars, and it is from On War that a mature conception of war has evolved and continues to evolve. By a “mature conception” I mean a theoretically mature conception of war. Since war inflames passions and feeds off irrationality, it can be difficult to engage with the topic of war with the requisite scientific disinterestedness. Clausewitz was the first to bring the attitude to the Enlightenment to war, and to seek to understand war as a rational process. One could argue that Hegel was doing something like this from a philosophical perspective at about the same time, but Clausewitz was a soldier with intellectual interests, while Hegel was a philosopher with an interest in history. The results were bound to be very different, and they were.
Also, Clausewitz’s understanding of Enlightenment rationalism took place when the romantic reaction against Enlightenment rationalism was already well underway, so, again Clausewitzs rationalism was bound to differ from the high Enlightenment representatives like Gibbon, Hume, and Condorcet. It might even be argued that the changes to Enlightenment rationalism that followed from the romantic reaction facilitated the very possibility of applying scientific reason to an object of knowledge as apparently irrational as war. There is an excellent book about post-Enlightenment science, The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science by Richard Holmes, that tells the story of the development of science during the romantic era. Holmes doesn’t discuss Clausewitz, but it would have fit nicely into the narrative.
As the scientific revolution continued to unfold, new influences came to bear upon the development of science, and this in turn opened up scientific knowledge to further frontiers. Clausewitz reflects both Enlightenment and romantic epistemic imperatives. We can find in Clausewitz an intimation of the distinction between nomothetic and idiographic science:

“One may laugh at these reflections and consider them utopian dreams, but one would do so at the expense of philosophic truth. Philosophy teaches us to recognize the relations that essential elements bear to one another, and it would indeed be rash from this to deduce universal laws governing every single case, regardless of all haphazard influences. Those people, however, who ‘never rise above anecdote’ as a great writer said, and who would construct all history of individual cases-starting always with the most striking feature, the high point of the event, and digging only as deep as suits them, never get down to the general factors that govern the matter. Consequently their findings will never be valid for more than a single case; indeed they will consider a philosophy that encompasses the general run of cases as a mere dream.” (On War, Book Six, p. 374)

This is still true today for those who insist that history is exclusively idiographic. In another work, The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (1823 - 1825), Clausewitz gave an account of history that seems highly idiographic, but which does not necessarily exclude the possibility of assimilating events to a nomothetic explanation:

“Although we are not inclined to see the events of this world as resulting from individual causes but always take them as the complex product of many forces, so that the loss of a single component can never produce a complete reversal {but only a partial transformation relative to the significance of the component}, we must nevertheless recognize that great results have often arisen from seemingly small events, and that an isolated cause, strongly exposed to the workings of chance, often brings forth universal effects.” (Chapter V, From The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (1823 - 1825))

Clausewitz had enough of the Enlightenment in him that he looked for the relations that essential elements bear to one another in war, and he was enough of a romantic that he recognized that it would be rash to deduce universal laws governing every single case. So should the study of war be idiographic or nomothetic? As I read Clausewitz, it’s a little of both, and it needs to be a little of both. As our theoretical framework for understanding war increases in sophistication and detail, we might be able to assimilate more individual cases to universal laws, but we won’t exhaust individual cases any time soon.
In an introductory essay to the English translation of On War by Peter Paret we find this description of Clausewitz’s intellectual independence, which was probably a necessary condition for this project:

“…important for our purpose is the intellectual independence with which he approached the fundamental military issues of the age, as well as his sympathy with the aims of humanistic education, and his conviction that the study of history must be at the center of any advanced study of war.” (p. 8)

Clausewitz himself makes the importance of history explicit:

“While there may be no system, and no mechanical way of recognizing the truth, truth does exist. To recognize it one generally needs seasoned judgment and an instinct born of long experience. While history may yield no formula, it does provide an exercise for judgment here as everywhere else.”

Clausewitz is here making a logical point that would later, in the twentieth century, be recognized as the decision problem. A whole series of metalogical theorems on decidability have been proved for various calculi. The problem is to determine a yes or no answer to a question about a theorem, for example, whether or not a given proposition is a theorem of a given system. History is of course much too complex to be reduced to any calculus, so no currently conceivable decision procedure is out of reach for history.
Even if history provides us with no formulae, it still can be a source of insight and judgment. Clausewitz elsewhere in On War goes even further and seems to deny that systemic study could be effective:

“History provides the strongest proof of the importance of moral factors and their often incredible effect: this is the noblest and most solid nourishment that the mind of a general may draw from a study of the past. Parenthetically, it should be noted that the seeds of wisdom that are to bear fruit in the intellect are sown less by critical studies and learned monographs than by insights, broad impressions, and flashes of intuition.” (On War)

Given the state of our knowledge of history, Clausewitz is probably right about this, and we have to mostly depend on insight, impressions, and intuition. However, I would argue that Clausewitz leaves this problem open-ended, especially in light of the earlier quote in which he mentions rising above anecdotes, as insights, impressions, and intuitions without even the possibility of assimilating these to general laws would amount to little more than anecdote, which Clausewitz explicitly says we must rise above.
There is another sense in which we can say that history informs our theoretical conceptions. Raymond Aron wrote a study of Clausewitz, Clausewitz: Philosopher of War, in which he makes an interesting observation:

“In his youth, he introduced moral forces into his theory; in his maturity, he introduced the conceptual distinction needed to reconcile the transhistoric theory with history, in other words the two extreme forms of war, each one conditioned or determined by circumstances or political intentions. In order to establish the equality of status in the two types of war, he had to recognize the unreality of absolute war which in many texts he represented as the only one consistent with the concept.”

Aron is suggesting that Clausewitz’s chief theoretical conception, absolute war, was unreal, but that it is conditioned and determined by historical circumstances. For Aron, history was the force that made theory responsive to practice. This is not all that different from the saying attributed to Thucydides, viz. that history is philosophy teaching by example. Thucydides also said that war is a stern master, and it brings men down to the level of their circumstances. Clausewitz knew this first hand, and when the lessons that philosophy teaches are the lessons of men being humbled despite the pretences to some higher position in the world, then we have been well and truly humbled.
We could call Thucydides’ observation about war being a stern master the Copernican principle of war, because it forces all participants into a recognition of their smallness within and peripherality to the bigger picture. Clausewitz himself had his share of Thucydides’ Copernican principle of war. He was in the thick of things during the Napoleonic wars, serving as aide-de-camp to Prince Augustus Ferdinand of Prussia at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt on 14 October 1806, where Hegel had glimpsed Napoleon and called him the world-spirit on horseback. Hegel fled Jena carrying the manuscript of his Phenomenology of Mind. Clausewitz was taken prisoner of war along with 25,000 others and spent two years as a prisoner of war in France after the catastrophic defeat of the Prussians at Jena. So Clausewitz experienced war as a stern master and he knew the bitterness of total defeat.
Fichte had also felt the weight of the German defeat by the French. In my episode on Fichte I talked about how he had given a series of public lectures subsequently published as Addresses to a German Nation. When Fichte was delivering this talk he is quoted as having said:

“I know very well what I risk; I know that a bullet may kill me, like Palm; but it is not this that I fear, and for my cause I would gladly die.”

War was also a stern master to Fichte; even those who were not soldiers like Clausewitz risked all. Like Fichte, Clausewitz believed that his people could rally, overcome defeat, and eventually regain their political autonomy. Machiavelli, too, had known defeat and had seen his people humiliated by an occupying force, which was also the French, but several hundred years earlier. Fichte wrote an essay about Machiavelli, which, after Clausewitz read it, he sent a letter to Fichte about his Machiavelli essay. In Clausewitz’s letter to Fichte he wrote this:

“This true spirit of war seems to me to consist in mobilizing the energies of every soldier to the greatest possible extent and in infusing him with warlike feelings, so that the fire of war spreads to every component of the army instead of leaving numerous dead coals in the mass. To the extent that this depends on the art of war, it is achieved by the manner in which the individual is treated, but even more by the manner in which he is employed. The modern art of war, far from using men like simple machines, should vitalize individual energies as far as the nature of its weapons permits—which, to be sure, establishes a limit, for an essential condition of large forces is to have the kind of organization that permits them to be led by a rational will without excessive friction.” (Letter to Fichte)

For Clausewitz, friction was a technical term. He wrote an entire chapter on friction in On War, saying, among much else:

“Friction is the only concept that more or less corresponds to the factors that distinguish real war from war on paper. The military machine—the army and everything related to it—is basically very simple and therefore seems easy to manage. But we should bear in mind that none of its components is of one piece: each part is composed of individuals, every one of whom retains his potential of friction.” (On War)

Returning to the previous quote, Clausewitz names three conditions of modern war as: 1) mobilizing the energies of individual soldiers, 2) leading them with a rational will, and 3) doing so without excessive friction. We don’t have to strain too much to see these conditions of modern war as conditions of the possibility of mass warfare that was eventually realized as the First World War, which I also call the first planetary-scale industrial war.
Clausewitz, fighting in the Napoleonic wars, was positioned to see the prehistory of industrialized warfare. A hundred years later, the prehistory of industrialized warfare eventually morphed into the history of industrial warfare in the strict sense. In my episode on Ernst Jünger I described industrialized warfare as a boundary condition out of which novel forms of modernity emerge. In particular, mechanized warfare is a boundary condition for an emergent form of heroism distinctive to mechanized warfare. Something qualitatively new had appeared in history, and this novel emergent generated a cluster of other emergents for which mechanized warfare was the boundary condition.
The conditions that Clausewitz described were the boundary conditions for industrialized warfare. Ernst Jünger was positioned to see and describe the emergence of true industrialized warfare, as Clausewitz was positioned to see its prehistory. The two authors testify to distinct periods in the development of planetary-scale industrialized warfare. This is a development that continues today, and continues to generate philosophical commentary on the novel emergents that have appeared in history as a result of industrialized warfare.
Today is not only the birthday of Clausewitz, it is also the 117th anniversary of the birth of Jan Patočka (01 June 1907 – 13 March 1977), who was born in Turnov, Bohemia, on this date in 1907. Patočka wrote a book on philosophy of history, Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, which was influenced by Husserl, Heidegger, and Hannah Arendt, among others. In the Fifth Essay: Is Technological Civilization Decadent, and Why? And especially in the Sixth Essay: Wars of the Twentieth Century and the Twentieth Century as War, Patočka discussed Ernst Jünger. I mentioned in my episode on Jünger that Jünger’s essay on total mobilization and his book The Worker was an influence on Heidegger, and Patočka too is interested in this work. Patočka’s description of the industrialization of Germany gives us the rational will and the organizational expertise to overcome the friction that Clausewitz saw as conditions of modern war:

“…Germany, for all its traditional structures, is the configuration that most closely approximated the reality of the new technoscientific age. Even its conservatism basically served a discipline that, contemptuous of equalization and democratization, vehemently and ruthlessly pursued the accumulation of building, organizing, transforming energy. Ernst Junger’s Der Arbeiter contains an implicit suspicion of the actual revolutionary nature of the old prewar Germany.! It is above all the ever deepening technoscientific aspect of its life. It is the organizing will of its economic leaders, its technocratic representatives forging plans leading inevitably to a conflict with the existing global order.”

Patočka also saw the orgiastic craziness of modern war that facilitated the mobilization of the energy of individual soldiers:

“War as a global ‘anything goes,’ a wild freedom, takes hold of states, becoming ‘total.’ The same hand stages orgies and organizes everydayness. The author of the five-year plans is at the same time the author of orchestrated show trials in a new witch hunt. War is simultaneously the greatest undertaking of industrial civilization, both product and instrument of total mobilization (as Ernst Jünger rightly saw), and a release of orgiastic potentials which could not afford such extreme of intoxication with destruction under any other circumstances. Already at the dawn of modernity, at the time of the wars of religion in the sixteenth. and seventeenth centuries, that kind of cruelty and orgiasm emerged. Already then it was the fruit of a disintegration of traditional discipline and demonization of the opponent though never before did the demonic reach its peak precisely in an age of greatest sobriety and rationality.”

It took the scientific and managerial resources of industrialized civilization—which Patočka and others call “technoscience”—to tame, and direct, and organize the orgiastic fury that was earlier released during the religious wars of the early modern period. I suspect that Junger would have largely agreed with this if he had read Patočka, and he could have read this since he lived longer than Patočka. It’s a bit more difficult to ascertain what Clausewitz would have thought of this.
To a certain extent it’s counter-intuitive to understand this orgiastic fury of warfare that Patočka described as a moral factor of war. We would perhaps like to think of the morality of war in terms of the various treaties like the Geneva Conventions that have attempted to moderate the brutality of armed conflict, or maybe the older framework of St. Augustines conception of a “just war.” There is, however, a wider sense of the use of the word “moral.” This wider sense of moral is less common that in the past. One could even say that this usage is becoming archaic. This is definitely is case with the idea of what were once called the moral sciences.The OED defines the moral sciences as:

(a) Those branches of knowledge which deal with the criteria of right and wrong;
(b) Cambridge University politics, philosophy, and economics, as a course of study.

This is now a defunct and archaic way to refer to the humanities and the social sciences. I suspect few if any university catalogs continue to use the moral sciences as a major division of the curriculum. But the idea of the moral sciences points to a wider sense of the term moral, and that is anything that engages specifically human responses to the world like politics, philosophy, and economics. In this context, moral doesn’t necessarily involve right and wrong, but it does involve what is human, all-too-human.
The Clausewitzean conception of war, which, as Raymond Aron said, was about introducing moral forces into our understanding of war, makes the study of war a moral science in this now archaic usage of “moral.” Clausewitz’s moral science of war is very close to what Ernst Jünger wrote about war being ultimately a spiritual endeavor. Patočka underlines this by recognizing the many social forces that came together to produce the wars of the twentieth century. Earlier I said that many philosophers have understood war as the engine that drives history forward. Patočka comes close to saying as much further along in his discussion of Jünger’s work:

“The first world war is the decisive event in the history of the twentieth century. It determined its entire character. It was this war that demonstrated that the transformation of the world into a laboratory for releasing reserves of energy accumulated over billions of years can be achieved only by means of wars. Thus it represented a definitive breakthrough of the conception of being that was born in the sixteenth century with the rise of mechanical natural science. Now it swept aside all the ‘conventions’ that inhibited this release of energy—a transvaluation of all values under the sign of power.” (Heretical Essays in the Philosophy of History, Sixth Essay, p. 124)

Clausewitz lived before this radical transvaluation of values, which is a phrase that Patočka has picked up from Nietzsche. Clausewitz belonged to the social order that was subsequently lost to the transvaluation of all values under the sign of power. He was there for the first stirrings of this transvaluation, but he did not see the completed arc of its development. Clausewitz’s traditionalism can be glimpsed in a document Clausewitz wrote in 1812—titled “Political Declaration” and published in Carl Von Clausewitz: Historical and Political Writings. Clausewitz wrote in the present tense, as a participant in historical events whose outcome was unknown as he wrote this account:

“The hatred that Napoleon bears toward the House of Hohenzollern is of course not obvious to everyone and not at all easy to explain. For some, however, it will be enough to know that at Tilsit a contemptuous coldness, indeed a suppressed hatred, could not be missed in the emperor’s personal conduct toward Frederick William III and his family, while the royal family's conduct toward Napoleon (thanks to a sense of dignity undiminished by politics!) had a more worthy and dignified bearing, which can of course enrage a vain and passionate man even more. There are also specific facts whose significance cannot be mistaken. The basis of Napoleon’s enmity probably lies above all in the liberality that characterizes the Prussian regime, which has attracted attention throughout Germany. Prussia, and particularly her ruling house, has public opinion on her side more than other states, and Napoleon is deeply hostile to this. The south German princes may be weary of French domination, but they have never been independent, they fear the vengeance of outsiders, and are without pride and self-esteem, half admirers and half flatterers of the French emperor. This is not the case with Frederick William III. This king, as everyone knows, is above all an upright man, incapable of hypocrisy: hatred of the French emperor is natural to him, and since he is sensitive and easily offended, his feelings are constantly inflamed by Napoleon’s abuses and can never grow numb. If he has refrained from expressing those feelings for political reasons (great self-possession being natural to him in any case), if he has admirably sacrificed his own dignity and that of his people in this regard, his reticence could never deceive the French emperor, and nothing is more natural than that Napoleon should have seen more deeply into the king’s heart than the king has into his.”

Here Napoleon is the upstart emperor who lacks the depth of dignity that the ancient family of the Hohenzollern possessed. Napoleon knew this, resented it, and the Napoleonic wars were one big cope-and-seethe because of it. The Hohenzollern represent the traditional aristocratic privilege that the French Revolution sought to overturn, and yet Napoleon and the Hohenzollerns found themselves forced into this diplomatic accommodation that both probably found distasteful. Napoleon was drawn into these ancient diplomatic traditions that the Revolution was in the process of sweeping away.
Not only was Napoleon draw into these ancient rituals of diplomacy, in having himself crowned emperor, he was effectively giving new life to these institutions, and the Hohenzollerns were drawn into paying their respects to a representative of the Revolution that would have done with them. For Clausewitz, the Hohenzollerns were an ancient aristocratic family reforming themselves and their kingdom along liberal lines, while Napoleon was the symbol of revolutionary change that threatened the established order of Europe. Patočka understood this, which why, in my earlier quote from him, he discussed the quasi-traditional, but, at the same time, the quasi-revolutionary nature of Imperial Germany, and Jünger’s response to this. This is not something I am prepared to exhaustively sort out, so I will leave it there for the moment.

Video Presentation

https://youtu.be/MAXr5Ze4bQg
https://www.instagram.com/p/C7s7dsjNGk5/
https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/carl-von-clausewitz%E2%80%99s-moral-science-of:f

Podcast Edition

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/NHFPd3MM5Jb
https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/a31b8276-53cd-4723-b6ad-a39c8faa4572/episodes/a59ed23b-eeb4-4469-9380-952a76bcba08/today-in-philosophy-of-history-carl-von-clausewitz%E2%80%99s-moral-science-of-warfare
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/carl-von-clausewitzs-moral-science-of-181857506/
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(Skip to the end to see the informal poll and avoid the anxious ramble)
My first year of teaching was a disaster from beginning to end. I know most teachers’ first year is the worst and you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing bc you don’t know what you’re doing and there’s so much pressure. Etc.
Even beyond the more typical misery was a lot of personal life tumult and turmoil and trauma and chaos going on, including a debilitating (somewhat unofficial but more or less confirmed based on symptoms) diagnosis I have to live with now without having much insight as to prognosis. And a lot more discomfort involving loved ones.
Reflecting on this year is almost as traumatic as the experience itself. I had next to zero support, with the exception of about 2 weeks under the guidance of an amazing master teacher. But that was it. The morale at the school was beneath rock bottom. Every single day was worse than the day before. I tried to go in positive. But with very few exceptions, everyone was miserable and no one tried to hide it. People were directly rude to me, condescending, sarcastic, openly comtemptful, angry, hated the kids and cursed about them and screamed at them (“shut UP!!!!” “MORON! GET OUT!” “You’re STUPID, I should have LET that student hit you!” “I woulda hit you in the face too if you’d done something like that to me!” Just a few quotes off the top of my head, not to mention one slamming the door on my sped teacher’s face along with our sped students, which the principal did absolutely nothing about despite his friendship with the sped teacher). Discipline/behavior was an absolute JOKE. I think I’ve painted an accurate picture of how awful it was.
I guessed my way through everything but did my absolute best and figured everything out. A bit of productive struggle and hey, by the end of the year I was an expert in a lot of things I knew nothing about months earlier. My rapport with my students was great, to give myself some credit. They loved me. Albeit too much—they thought of my softness as a doormat. They felt free and liberated in my classroom bc I seldom raised my voice. Unfortunately what they’re accustomed to is only listening when yelled at, and as a new teacher, I did not have better tools to manage classroom behavior, beyond building relationships, and my class was a bit out of control. It became all about getting through the curriculum through the 3rd quarter.
My benchmark scores went up, which was pretty amazing considering everything. However at the very beginning of the 4th quarter my principal informed me that he wasn’t renewing my contract and that he would never let me teach 4th grade again, that “I don’t know if I would ever let you teach any grade level, maybe try pre-k—you get nap time and someone is always with you.” So he wrote off my career as an elementary teacher after just a few months of teaching. I could go in about how he had covertly brought in his very own former student (who had only recently began prepping to take the Praxis) as my replacement, unofficially “employed” but “technically not.” But I don’t want to get into that, as furious as it made me. I just stopped writing lesson plans bc no way was I gonna train her for free when they gave me zero support through the year.
I had way more bad days than good—the kids and my para got me through it! I was grateful for that. They were wonderful and I miss them. But I was made to feel incompetent. I slowly started to realize that him booting me was a blessing in disguise, especially after learning how many students I’d have had next year. And some other changes that won’t be helpful.
There’s also a lot of BS going on in our state regarding education. So things are not exactly going to get easier. Alas, I need a paycheck and I went to school and passed praxis to be a teacher. I’m 44 so it’s not like I have many options.
But I did actually finally get an interview at a library last week! I’d applied for 6 years and never got so much as a phone call. Unfortunately it’s part time and drastically less pay (which is honestly pitiful). And it would take me years to make close to what I make now. And I was just getting into certification so as a teacher I’d get a $10k raise. Buuut I really don’t want to miss a rare opportunity to get my foot in the door at the library!
I’ve got dozens of job offers in my district. I had 6 principals call me and email me yesterday alone! I know I could make decent money. But I don’t want to turn down the library job, which absolutely would not cut it financially.
I forgot to mention a key component of this dilemma: Teaching is extremely overstimulating to me. I’m autistic/adhd. This was part of my misery. Between my loud a/c units in my classroom and the kids noises desks constantly clanking and kids constantly talking over me etc etc etc, and the awful attitudes of most coworkers and all the other stuff, I barely made it to the end of the year. I know most of us actually feel that way, but my day to day in the classroom is beyond awful. I cried constantly, I had panic attacks going in every single morning during the 4th quarter after years of reduced panic attacks, most days I felt frustrated, and some days I even had moments where I could not even talk anymore and had to go home (these days where at least one kid told me to “Shut the f- - k up b-tch!” or fought or both plus admin treated me like crap and I had enough). Not to mention spending entire weekends and weeknights writing lesson plans, creating lessons, grading, entering grades, etc etc etc. All I could think about every day was how much I wished I could get a library job!! I even had a student tell me I would make a better librarian than teacher. She was excited when I got the call about the interview lol.
But what if my next school is better? What if I go in knowing expectations and having a better idea of how to do things and how to establish classroom procedures, what if it’s better? What if it’s stupid to give up on a better paying job? I’d love to get my MLIS but realistically, there aren’t very many librarian jobs and moving isn’t an option. The day to day would almost be worth the paycut. I’ve contemplated doing both, just for one year. I know that sounds nuts, and it’s risky, but what’s more important? My paycheck, or my mental health?! I honestly don’t know! I need the money. But I also need a peaceful environment.
Here are my options:
A) Substitute w library for almost the same money as I made uncertified, which was barely enough
B) Library + teaching full time bc you’re insane and unrealistic
C) Library only + MLIS bc it’s your dream & short term paycut is worth long term happiness.
D) Girl, are you insane?! Teaching only bc it’s the smart move!

At first I wanna clarify that English is not my first language so I apologise if there are any mistakes. Also this story is kind long so thank you if decide to read it.
Me (16f) and my "best friend" (also 16f) have known each other for 6 years. Let's call her Maya. So Maya and I met when she moved into my neighbourhood. We quickly became friends. I ended our friendship once before but we became friends again after a while. After she ended her frienship with her ex best friend we started to talk more than before. We were in different classes but still were friends. I'm the type of person who doesn't like dramas etc. Maya however, I feel like she's living for them. She got into arguments with girls from my class because of what the last weeks of school were not the best for me. I don't wanna get into detalis with this one but just know that both sides weren't angels. What made me question our frienship was what happend lately. It made me realise how toxic and narcissistic she is. So me and Maya are in the same high school right now and went lately on a school exchange program. We had a room with two different girls - let's call them Sarah and Ginny. Me and Sarah were friends in the kindergarten and after this we haven't seen each other for 8 years. Now we are in the same class. Ginny and I have English together. So I'm kind of their mututal friend. So we arrived there on Monday. And at first everything seemed to be great, our room was great, the scenery around the hotel was just beautiful. We took photos etc. Then we had a meeting with people from the other country. They were really great. Maya however kept having really bad attitude with me, not matter what I did or said she just had to say something rude back. She rolled her eyes at me several times too. She was really rude and kept making those jokes that made me feel sad and uncomfortable. I shrugged it off tho. On Tuesday however she became even more rude and kept ruining my mood. Around 7pm Sarah and Maya wanted to go for a run. At this point I need to say that I don't run too often and feel uncomfortable about my posture while running so I wasn't really liking the idea. Our teacher knocked and walked into our rooms and told us that behind the hotel there was a good place to run, away from everyone etc. Sarah said that she wants to go there and I thought that since it's away from everyone I might as well try and test my condition. That's when Maya snapped at me. Our teacher was already gone from our room and Maya was literally yelling at me. She wasn't just screaming, literally yelling. She didn't even let me say a word. When I finally managed to say something I asked her (as calmly as I could) if she's gonna let me say something and she yelled back "no". I then said that in that case I'm not gonna continue this "conversation". After this I left the room and called my mum who was basically the only person I could talk to at that moment. I told her all that what happend and she was really mad, I tried to recall what I could possibly do to make Maya so pissed but couldn't. While yelling at me I didn't understand too much of what she was saying but I caught something about Sarah. My mum said that she was jealous which was ridiculous cuz I was talking with Maya all the time. I also wanna add that I hate when people raise their voices at me and everyone who knows me know about it. Which made even more sad. I won't hide the fact that I cried on a phone with my mum for at least half and hour. She said something and i realised that she was right. She said that Maya is very controlling and always wants things to go her way. She said a lot things but long story short she adviced me to talk to Sarah and Ginny about it and don't care about Maya. After this I came back, fixed myself in a bathroom's mirror that was in a corridor. But Maya had a key to our room so I just sat on a chair in front and waited for honestly I don't even know what. I then checked my phone which I had on mute and saw so many messages and missed calls. From all 3 of them. Maya texted me I quote "I'm sorry I know you didn't want me to feel this way" I was speechless, it was all about her again. It always is. We always go where she wants to go. We always do what she wants to do. And then this text. I was even more hurt. Idk if I was right to feel even more hurt or not. Anyway she and others who were on this trip with us walked into the corridor, she hugged me and said a blant sorry. I felt disgusted by her touch. Idk of I was overreacting or not but that's how I felt. She then gave me a key and asked of I wanna go play some games with her and others. I declined, I didn't feel like going, I opened the room and my mums words hit me. When I think about it now, wish I stayed in this room. But I didn't, i left and went to the room where was Maya and the others, we played some games and it was kinda fun. But definitely not the people I would normally wanna hung out with. After we left she said, I quote "you again came only after Sarah called you" after this she run into the bathroom and slammed the door. I run after her (which i want yall to remember) but realised that it's no use. I was really confused of what she was saying because i didn't even pay attention to who was calling me. After this i called my mum again and she told me to talk to Sarah (and Ginny too, but my mum knows Sarah more) and so i did. Or at least what I tried to do. She was dancing with other in front of our hotel. I came up to her and asked if we can talk after she stops dancing. She said "of course" and invited me to dance with them but i didn't feel like it. I sat on the curb and patiently waited while quietly sobbing. A few minutes later a girl came up to me and asked if i would dance with her (my group wanted to teach the other a really popular dance in my country) cuz she didn't have a partner. I don't know why but i said yes. I guess i wanted to clear my head a little. While we were dancing i noticed Maya walking around, clearly wanting too be noticed. I didn't know what to do but I kept dancing. After this i didn't see Maya anywhere. I managed to talk to Sarah a little (a little because other kept walking around us and talking to us) and she really didn't like Maya's behaviour. She said that we can talk in the morning before breakfast (cuz we will have more time) and i agreed. We came back to our room at around 10pm. Maya was in her bed, scrolling on her phone, I was really nervous at this moment. After we walked in, it was so quiet. I never heard silence quite this loud. Sarah decided to take a shower and i honestly didn't want her to go. Ginny was also in her bed but she's more of the watching-the-chaos kinda person. I sat on my bed and that's when Maya spoke. She said "i understand that you don't have much to say, do you" I then told her that we should talk the next day, with clear minds. She snorted. I must admit that i don't remember everything from this conversation. What do remember is how she kept atacking me fe. She said that I'm begging for attention (when i literally hate attention) and said that if not for her i wouldn't meet anyone from the other country. She then started crying and accused me of putting others above her because danced with this girl instead of going after her and because apparently i talk to everyone but her (which is literally a lie) I sat next to her and started to shrug her back. I didn't wanna touch her but i really didn't know what to do. That's when Sarah left the bathroom and sat on her bed. I tried to express my feelings and say what I don't like (i tried to be as calm as possible even tho i was shaking inside becasue i hate arguments and have problem with expresing feelings). She kept interputing me, yelling at me and made the things I said look like they are worthless or used them to make me the villain. We eventually "made up" but I wasn't really satisfied with it. I suddenly started to remember all the things in the past that i shrugged of, for example when she body shamed one of my classmates that she had drama with, or when she was mad that i talk to her. Or even when she got mad that I didn't wanna go where she wanted. It all hit me. I couldn't sleep that night because I had too much thoughts. There was a lot of situations in the next days but I will save you the details. However there are some situations I wanna share. For example when she got mad at me that I didn't work with her (after she literally chosed to be partners with someone else) to the point that even girls that don't speak our language knew that somethings up with us. Or when she made me, Sarah and Ginny feel guilty because we didn't wanna go where she wanted when we were in a city. (She wanted to go shopping while the rest of us wanted to go eat something downtown etc). The is a lot of more but It's too much to write. At this trip I decided that I no longer want to continue this friendship, but the thing is that we already have plans together. For example we are going to the same concert of our favorite artist together (I literally have her ticket and our sits and next to each other) or (possibly but its not 100% sure) we are going on the same school trip together. I know that it might sound pathetic but I really don't know what to do. I don't wanna complicate things before the concert. But also ending it after seems a little selfish (that's what one of my friends said). But let's be honest, there is never a good time to end a friendship or relationship. Have any of you ever read the perks of being a wallflower? I'm starting to kinda understand Craig now. I'm not talking about him cheating but about his problems with ending the relationship cuz there is never a good moment. What I know is that I feel really drained and my energy dissappears the moment i see her. I also don't wanna be her "best friend" anymore but I also feel like I'm selfish. So what do you yall think? Was I in the wrong? Am I selfish? Please be honest

For those that don't know, "captain-save-a-hoe" is a rap song from 1993 by E-40.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=T0bOVf9-b-E&si=27us5cTpnUfhyNVC
The song tells us about a guy who drains his wallet and spends all his time tryna impress a girl with expensive dates and gifts in order to try and fuck her, cause that's the best/only way he can think of to impress women.
(I've been that guy before. It's not always about feeling entitled or owed like some people say).
What usually happens is that she'll accept his treats and might possibly hang out with him. But she's gonna be partying/clubbing around and sleeping with anyone but him.
And then if he gets mad about it and confronts the other guy who's fuckin' her, he's just gonna get his ass kicked and the song explains how a lot of people will think he's a prick and deserves it (idk why), like in these quotes from the song:
"captain motherfuckin save a hoe came to me, flashed just like a little old biatch all up in front of my company. Had to check his ass with an ear check thump and punked him. Talkin' to him while I'm beatin' his ass, pumpin' fear, talkin' about, 'N****, you gon' retrospect somethin' here, oh yeah?'"
"Mister super trick, mister super snitch, yeah. You wanna kill me cause I fucked your bitch. You shouldn't had your cape on tight that night, cause the n**** like the shashow plugs em right, and now your bitch is straight calling ME, loving ME."
I don't wanna be a trick/biatch. I don't want some guy singing this to ME. I wanna be the guy singing this to someone ELSE, make him feel like a trick/biatch, you know? But then a lot of people, even my own brother with a girlfriend and 3 kids, think this song and this attitude as a whole is disrespectful to women. I know it uses the word "hoe", but it's still meant to insult men, NOT women.

The purpose of this post is not only to serve as a reflective piece in regards to the war and what led up to it but to detail the likely political outcomes that will arise following an (almost certain) Israeli victory, as well as to suggest measures and positions I think people should take that would result in the best outcomes for humanity. Feel free to critique any of the points I bring up, preferably directly with quotations instead of going on tangents after skimming it.
As of writing this post, we are in the beginning stages of the Rafah offensive, an offensive which signals the closing period of the war following Hamas being ousted from power in large swaths of the Gaza Strip. ~1.3 million Palestinians are currently taking refuge in Rafah.
For years many people observing the conflict have warned against irredentism and irredentist policies as a flame to the fire of the conflict. It is objectively true that while Israel undoubtedly has the benefit of being the dominant power in the region, Jews make up either just under half or barely half of the people in the region from the river to the sea. Yet despite this, right-wing Israeli parties with explicitly irredentist wishes have repeatedly won elections in Israel both local and national for decades leading up to Bibi's nearly twenty-year term(s) with some brief stints in his reign. In spite of Israelis' "democratic" desires and their desire to maintain Israel as a Jewish-majority state, they are still very much pushing for their irredentist ideas, which, chiefly due to unfavorable demographics, find themselves at odds with ideas of democracy and maintaining the Jewish character or Jewish majority of Israel. In essence, Jews essentially need no more than a "comfortable" minority of enfranchised Arabs in their state, so that they are able to sustain a Jewish political majority and keep democratic processes intact. This concept of what certain % of Arabs in a Jewish state should be a worry was well explained by Ben Gurion himself:
"Addressing the Central Committee of the Histadrut (the Eretz Israel Workers Party) days after the UN vote to partition Palestine, Ben-Gurion expressed his apprehension, stating:
"the total population of the Jewish State at the time of its establishment will be about one million, including almost 40% non-Jews. Such a [population] composition does not provide a stable basis for a Jewish State. This [demographic] fact must be viewed in all its clarity and acuteness. With such a [population] composition, there cannot even be absolute certainty that control will remain in the hands of the Jewish majority... There can be no stable and strong Jewish state so long as it has a Jewish majority of only 60%.[130]"
How do they accomplish their irredentist desires to the best of their abilities while maintaining a Jewish-majority state that they (the Jews, with a 'comfortable' minority of Arabs) can vote for democratically? I like this passage from an interview with Ilan Pappe that explains what occurred following the Six Day War, though I also like this comment which explains the options presented to them well:
"Democratic Zionism hinges on a Jewish majority and full rights for minorities. Territorial expansion is poison: The moment Israel conquered enough land that Jews were a minority in the territory it controlled, the Jewish political majority can only be sustained artificially through the disenfranchisement and segregation or outright expulsion of the Arabs, aka apartheid and genocide. It's also self perpetuating because the people who managed to enrich themselves by dispossessing Palestinians of their land will want to hold on to their ill-gotten gains and will block-vote for fascist parties that perpetuate the occupation. Rather than surrender occupied land, irredentists would expel or exterminate the locals, and this way you get genocidal Kahanists as a mass movement."
While there was a "Naksa" in 1967 it wasn't large enough to counter these issues. As a result, Israelis opted for the perpetual disenfranchisement and in many ways segregation of Palestinians while simultaneously building and expanding Jewish settlements in the West Bank. In addition to this, following over two decades of the PLO's struggles against Israel culminating in the first intifada and subsequently the Oslo accords, Israel made use of the PA to function as the governing power of what can best be compared to Bantustans for Palestinians within Israeli-controlled territory. They are not independent in any meaningful capacity and have historically served the role of lapdogs for the Israeli government. Their function, aside from parading a veneer of Palestinian "autonomy" or pseudo-independence, is - whether by design or by default - to serve as a pain reliever for the Israeli government against accusations of disenfranchisement and apartheid, the P.A's faux authority over Palestinians is regularly brought up as a means of ignoring the state of affairs which in effect is a system of apartheid against Palestinians. Essentially people often like to separate the PA-controlled areas enough from Israel so far that they compare them to say Canada and the United States in an attempt to absolve Israel of its oppressive domination over Palestinians and all the negatives that come with it. There's a reason comparing border checkpoints on the U.S-Canada border and checkpoints in the West Bank doesn't work. There's a reason Israel's "border wall" is unique from other border walls around the world. Of course how the P.A came to be is more complex than this but this is the role they serve in reality. For the same reason the existence of Bantustans for black South Africans excluding them from the political system did not serve as a meaningful justification for the state of affairs they were forced to endure, the Bantustans Palestinians currently have is not enough to dissuade all accusations of apartheid against the Israeli government. Israelis still directly govern hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Area C and they still indirectly govern millions of Palestinians in Areas A and B of the West Bank, not only by holding unyielding power over the P.A, punishing them whenever they are too out of line (more recent example here), but in effect Israel controls virtually every aspect of Palestinian society and even basic means of how and when they can travel outside of their tiny Bantustans or enclaves and to where. For some people who've seen my other comments, this might sound like I'm a broken record but it's important I get the point across. What does this "state of affairs" entail?
Well for many years settler violence has undoubtedly been a problem Palestinians faced. More often than not when it is brought up in official and non-official capacities people trivialize the settlers and their backers, underestimating them as a fringe subgroup in Israeli society. This cannot be further from the truth. If you are interested in learning about how fundamental the settlement movement is within the Israeli government, some of the inequalities Palestinians face, and who exactly they target aside from Palestinians here is an excellent piece by the New York Times comprehensively covering the history of the settlement movement and how they have so stringently permeated Israeli political culture. Please pay attention to what they wrote and try to read the entire thing instead of skimming it, it is well-written and informative.
As I've said above for many years now Israelis have repeatedly elected political parties stringently in favor of increased settlement of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, take Likud's charter for instance (Likud has been in power and the dominant party in Israel for the better part of two decades by now). I linked a comment of mine with the source highlighting the relevant bits due to character limits on posts, but feel free to read through the entire platform. This is precisely the platform Israelis have elected to represent their interests, although it must be stressed not all Israelis agree with these views, obviously. It is not a secret that Bibi and friends are expansionists to the depths of their soul, Bibi for instance has made an innumerable amount of public appearances and statements in favor of Israeli expansionism, settlements and annexations. On numerous occasions, he has pushed strongly for annexing portions of the West Bank before things like the Abraham Accords disrupted them. Now that you understand at least part of the significance of pro-settlement sentiment in Israeli politics, it shouldn't be hard to understand the aforementioned issue of settler violence. In a UN report from September 2023 prior to October 7th, it was revealed that settler violence has displaced over 1,100 Palestinians just since 2022 alone. Since October 7th the number of incidents of settler violence has increased. To use a more anecdotal example, I had this to say about a then-disbanded settlement near my family's village in the West Bank under the second quoted part, (can't copy-paste due to character limits for posts).
The Palestinians were compared to the KKK in that very thread, but this outpost was re-established the following year, and lo and behold I found this in the New York Times just a few months ago, please just read through the bits I highlighted in the article at least. In that same article a Jewish settler literally uses the “We’re here because God gave us this land in the Torah,” (his exact words) argument to justify the illegal outpost. Side note but this type of thing is precisely why people in general must take a stance on "personal" religion in matters even tangentially related to politics, under even the slightest bit of scrutiny it is anything but personal. It is instead in large part an arbitrary set of reactionary and hostile beliefs that one feels are immune from criticism which subsequently affects political discourse and leads them to break international law and/or commit heinous acts of violence as well as derail efforts to reach a peaceful resolution. Let's not delude ourselves into believing secular parties like Likud are any better but religious fanaticism is also a problem. Hopefully this puts the issue of settler violence more into perspective.
Some of the more common occurrences that have been occurring for a while and that I've been complaining about include Israeli authorities engaging in beating (including of little kids) Palestinians, kidnapping Palestinians often arbitrarily, including innocent Palestinians, torture, and murder, including of little kids (another example) and regularly, theft both big and small, and often arbitrarily engaging in the destruction of property (desecration of Shireen Abu Akleh's memorial, destroying roads, pretty much any and all national memorials) as well as desecration of mosques (Exhibit A) (Exhibit B), administrative detention and keeping countless Palestinians imprisoned without a right to trial, and you get the point. This is just in the West Bank. Any attempt to respond to these actions is met with what is quite clearly articulated here and here. Any Jew from anywhere around the world can move to settlements in the West Bank sometimes specifically made for immigrants where they're then able to vote and live under civilian law/rule while their Palestinian counterparts are disenfranchised and living under military rule. Palestinians are banned from obtaining legal permits to build anything in the overwhelming majority of the West Bank, whereas settlers routinely build settlements on land stolen or expropriated from Palestinian localities or privately owned Palestinian land, only to have their outposts and settlements legalized and expanded, as was the case with numerous outposts that were 'legalized', like Homesh, which is the focus of the article I linked above.
This state of affairs simply isn't sustainable for Palestinians. The kleptocratic Palestinian authority and all the major players in the Arab league have time and time again offered a two-state solution with East Jerusalem as its capital and Shtayyeh even called for it to be demilitarized with land swaps. The issue is that no matter how "liberal" Palestinians are, or to what extent they increase or decrease terrorism, Israelis simply see their domination over the West Bank the best, most safe and comfortable option. As Ilan Pappe explains:
"In 1967, the government treated the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a natural part of “Eretz Israel,” the land of Israel, and this attitude has continued ever since. When you look at the debate between the right- and left-wing parties in Israel on this issue, their disagreements have been about how to achieve this goal, not about its validity."
I and other people far smarter and more knowledgeable than I am have already anticipated every security concern that could come out of a Palestinian state and they are pretty much all solvable, whether it be by demilitarization, land swaps, ensuring cooperation, some limited troop presence or a combination of all these things and more. It's the irredentism amongst Israelis, sprinkled with religio-historical fetishism also coupled with the resources (including but not limited to groundwater) present in the West Bank that simply makes it seem like holding on to such a large chunk of an important territory is worth all the disenfranchisement, oppression and humiliation Palestinians have to face, only perpetuating the conflict.
As far as they (by they I mean Israeli irredentists) are concerned, a few Palestinian lives being taken every year is a small price to pay for the West Bank, "mowing the grass" in Gaza every now and then isn't ideal for them, while there's a lot they'd like to change, they know they simply can't ethnically cleanse or genocide Palestinians, therefore they can essentially just wait the Palestinians out, solidify their control via settlements, Olim (or jewish immigrants) and later annexations and no one can stop them. Even the United States and a plethora of the world's nations had already begun to recognize Israel's "right" to annex East Jerusalem. Same with the Golan heights which was annexed even with the approval of "leftist" Israeli parties. As far as they're concerned they could replicate the situation with the Golan heights and East Jerusalem in parts of the West Bank leaving behind enclaves for Palestinians until those inevitably fall under Israeli control as well.
This technique of slow death simply was not accepted by Palestinians. Like any other group of people, when faced with the situation they faced in the West Bank they took up a long-winded campaign of guerilla warfare. Do not mistake this statement with me saying every instance of violence by Palestinians can be excused because of this, absolutely not. The massacres on October 7th do not fall under the umbrella of justified violence/resistance against the occupation. But Palestinians in large part did carry out genuine methods of counter-attacks against their oppressors or soldiers/militants/combatants in the West Bank. The Palestinians weren't so complacent to the plans of Israelis to have them continually locked in within a grey area or kept in limbo until Israel was comfortable with it's majority enough to annex some more land. It is not reasonable to value the comfort of the Israeli state in it's irredentist ventures against Palestinians naturally having to react to their frustrating state of limbo. This limbo and statelessness excludes Palestinians from basic human experiences as a dignified people other people often take for granted and keeps them in a perpetual state of oppression.
It must be stressed, though, that Israelis misusing the amount of power they have to reach a peaceful resolution does not mean we as Palestinians don't also need to work with them, we absolutely do.
Above my focus has mostly been on the West Bank, now I am shifting to the Gaza Strip. If you thought what was above is bad, its nothing compared to what has been going on in the Gaza Strip.
Following the Second Intifada Palestinians got a blank slate in the Gaza Strip but were still plagued by the plight of other Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem (as well as parts of the diaspora), the failure of secular Palestinian politics in granting Palestinians proper independence, coupled with growing Islamist influences following the failure of predominantly secular governments in the Six Day war and following conflicts led to Hamas and other Islamist groups like the PIJ gaining a pretty much never-ending reserve of frustrated Palestinian youth that they can recruit from. To the dismay of Palestinian parents for example in Nablus, which however is in the West Bank.
I have long believed that Hamas is an evil organization at its very core which is kept alive by the constant stream of (rightfully) frustrated Palestinians (and foreign funding from oppressive regimes like that of Iran) who Hamas and allied groups then use in order to follow their short-sighted policies of meaningless terrorism often including against Israeli civilians in Israel proper as a garbage alternative to striving for peace. Here is an exhaustive list of just some of their attacks you can sift through. Their carelessness for protecting Palestinian lives is highlighted by the fact that not a single bomb shelter was built for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Whether or not these bomb shelters don't exist as a result of their resources being used to build/develop Gaza's complex tunnel warfare system/other military installations/weapons or because as some theorize Hamas deliberately wants as many casualties as possible is mostly irrelevant, in all cases the bottom line is the same, these groups regularly drag the Gaza Strip as a whole into wars while Palestinians basically have nowhere to take shelter in. This degree of incompetence or as some theorize outright malice in protecting Palestinian lives also serves as a pain reliever for basically any and all civilian casualties that arise from Israeli strikes. When Israel committed that particularly terrible strike on the refugee camps in Rafah a few days ago that killed over 45 people (where there was a video of a beheaded baby being held) it was justified or noted by the IDF (and noticeably by a Saudi paper almost immediately, make of that what you will) that two Hamas officials were reportedly there who engaged in militancy against the IDF in the West Bank, before Bibi called the entire strike a mishap and a tragic mistake. Israelis are so used to killing dozens or hundreds of Palestinians in one fell swoop and having it justified since Hamas doesn't provide Palestinians with bomb shelters which covers up or casts a cloud of doubt over their strikes/operations that it still thinks this behavior is fine when Palestinians are decidedly in regions where they don't live/don't have access to bomb shelters. Israel warned civilians to move, but this seems pointless since militants (or rather anyone just tied to Hamas, who Israel also targets) could also move with them since they also obviously live amongst civilians. It feels like virtue signaling, as Hamas members can blend in with civilians and relocate as instructed. This makes the warnings ineffective. People with more expertise in this field can clarify this or correct any misconceptions I have.
Even if we were to say this claim about the officials isn't dubious the fact that no one accepts the same premise when rockets are fired at Tel Aviv or cities in Israel where military/governmental institutions and officials are located in or near shows some degree of double standards. As a matter of fact, There are a ridiculous amount of plaques (you can search some of them yourself here) dotted all over Israel commemorating buildings that were used as places to store weapons, train militants etc. while they were schools, religious buildings and hospitals by the Irgun, Lehi and Haganah. There is something deeply disturbing about the IDF publicly using Hamas' tactics of storing weapons or having command centers in or near civilian areas and infrastructure to justify killing thousands of civilians in the process when the IDF's emblem stems from their predecessor which did the exact same thing, yet they celebrate them and it's apparently only bad when Palestinians do it. Just to be clear I don't agree with the practice of shooting missiles at Israeli cities but having no problem with killing many civilians because one official or something might live in the same proximity to them strikes me as very wrong.
Yes, I am aware all forms of resistance are punished, functionally Israel does not care whether you are targeting Israeli civilians in Israel proper or violent Israeli settlers/combatants/soldiers in the West Bank, you will be arrested, tortured and imprisoned for the rest of your life if you are caught resisting Israel or attacking basically any Israelis in almost any capacity, that is if you somehow don't manage to get killed on the spot. In spite of all this we must still be aware that this is irrelevant to the fact that what Hamas did on October 7th is not only morally abhorrent to anybody with a soul, but is ultimately just a garbage policy even for us Palestinians and does not qualify as any meaningful form of "resistance". Some pro-Palestinians will unfortunately try to cherry-pick instances of militants going into homes and not harming the people there but sorry, this does nothing to placate the fact that Hamas and friends were involved in murdering civilians on a mass scale. I suspect people will accuse me of some form of "bothsidesism" but both Hamas and friends as well as Israel have demonstrated time and time again that they are fine with carrying out horrifying and murderous actions.
Israel's behavior in the Gaza Strip thus far has been nothing short of abhorrent. whether it be murdering elderly civilians (another example, and another example of murder), arbitrarily destroying civilian homes, infrastructure (including mosques as seen here and here), universities and schools, mass murdering Palestinians (Exhibit A), (Exhibit B), not to mention the mass graves and starvation as a weapon of war, you get the point. As you can see in many instances they voluntarily recorded and uploaded these things to social media. Israel is slowly but surely going to take power over millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip directly, they will be under direct Israeli rule, Israelis' responsibility if no deal is worked out where the P.A or something takes over and will remain very close to Israelis. Palestinians collectively know Israel isn't there to "save them from Hamas" as is portrayed on their Twitter accounts, this behavior and keeping them in concentration camps is a good way to ensure Palestinians remain entrenched in political violence against Israel, no one cares when Avichay Adraee speaking Arabic embarrasses himself on Tiktok and tries to disway Palestinians from becoming militants, treating Palestinians with humanity is the best way to ensure they don't regress into further political violence.
As this war has demonstrated Palestinians simply cannot afford to try and achieve ridiculously idealistic and unrealistic goals in the face of such a dominant superpower let alone using such animalistic violence. I am well acquainted with the extent of irredentism present in Palestinian society (both in Palestine and in the diaspora), while it can match that of Israelis, at the very least the corrupt kleptocratic P.A is the only genuine force in the region interested in a two-state solution. Even one-stater Palestinians have celebrated the recent recognition of Palestine as a state by Norway, Spain, Ireland and Jamaica (might be missing a few), which is a point to strengthen my camp's base as a means of proving we actually manage to get at least parts of our vision done. I understand Palestinians are frustrated with their state of affairs, and yes I am aware of the plethora of IDF soldiers present in the casualties of October 7th that are constantly referred to as innocent civilians including in the state of the union address, none of this does anything to justify raping women or killing kids. Hostage-taking is another issue, for many years hostages were used by Palestinians as a bargaining chip since they were crucial to freeing countless unlawfully imprisoned Palestinians, eventually, the hostages were returned to their families once again, no lives were taken and Palestinians advanced their quest for liberty, Hamas and friends simply are far too different from the Palestinian militants of old, they deliberately kidnapped children on top of all the murder, rape and destruction they put forward. I do not care that some of the hostages said they were treated well or weren't harmed, children are off-limits and their actions were not only pointless and detrimental to the Palestinian cause, but also downright evil.
Hamas and their allies are sure to be dealt a critical blow as a result of this war and their heinous actions, as is Bibi's government, what is going to unfold in the coming years, following this colossal and seismic shift in the political culture and what courses of action or positions are best to take? I'm not a political analyst so this part is going to be lackluster but thats fine because I want to generate discussion/critique about any part of this post.
As recent opinion polling would show, popularity for Bibi's government has been steadily declining following his re-election in 2022, initially mainly in response to Likud's plans for the judicial reform, and particularly following October 7th. Following the attacks on October 7th, the National Unity Alliance (made up of Gantz' blue and white, New Hope and independents) is leading the polls, though the inverse is slowly starting to come back true again. Now following October 7th, Gantz' party has formed a war cabinet with Likud, and Gantz was appointed as a minister without portfolio in the thirty-seventh government, led by Bibi. What does this mean for Israel's following elections? Well I don't know. I'm not being facetious here, it's just that Israel is notorious for having a metric crap ton of new parties that keep popping up and dissolving. Case in point, Yamina which existed for only three years, one of it's founders Bennet was the prime minister of Israel briefly. Their politics are very volatile. What's important here is the data showing Bibi being dealt a critical blow. The plethora of protests against Bibi's government even before October 7th aren't an indicator that Bibi's political career will survive much longer. The ICC's warrants only make him and by extension his country more of pariahs, even if as some say Israelis would generally stand alongside Bibi against the ICC, there's no reason to keep digging the hole they're in by re-electing Bibi over and over given the security failure and judicial reform.
Palestinian polling is a little less interesting since they don't have elections and now is a bit of an awkward time to ask people for political opinions (at least ones they come to on a clear head) but here is a comment of mine going over some political polling a little while before Oct. 7. I suppose we'll have to wait until this war is over to see what Palestinians think the next course of action is best to take, right now they're obviously concerned with surviving the turmoil. Aside from Hamas' looming destruction, the situation in the West Bank can easily just stay the same until Abbas dies, if people don't bother interfering with his rule on a mass and organized scale.
People's opinions are generally malleable, whether it be from Israelis and Palestinians. In favor of a 2ss and against it. Both populations are notoriously quite stubborn but they are not aliens and the hope for a 2ss isn't completely lost.
I'll talk a bit about the United States, given that they've been bankrolling this thing on a mass scale. Now I love the United States as a country for a number of different reasons, but I will not delude myself into believing they had anything resembling a right or coherent policy.
I don't think anyone needs an explainer as to how pro-Israel Trump is, but it's possible people aren't exactly familiar with Biden's history regarding Israel:
"In 1982, shortly before Reagan bluntly ordered Begin to cease his ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon, a young US senator who revered Elie Wiesel as his great teacher met the Israeli prime minister. In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended the Israeli war effort and boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children. Begin himself was taken aback by the words of the future US president, Joe Biden. ‘No, sir,’ he insisted. ‘According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war ... This is a yardstick of human civilisation, not to hurt civilians.’" (https://tinyurl.com/352k8zna) (https://theintercept.com/2021/04/27/biden-israeli-invasion-lebanon/)
Glossing over the absolute hilarity of Begin of all people talking about not killing civilians or women and children, when the population has to choose between Trump or someone who said the above quite clearly as a conscious adult political figure you're looking at trouble. Biden even attended and spoke at Herut's (Menachem Begin's old party) Zionist for America convention. Today of course he has milquetoast Democratic Zionist takes and faux sympathy for Palestinians, but at his core he is still a politician who (very poorly) adapts to his voter base. I don't think this is surprising for a vast number of politically active Americans, Biden's lifeline as a politician is people looking at him as a lesser evil to Trump. This is hardly the biggest issue though, virtually all U.S senators are currently being bankrolled by pro-Israel lobbying groups like AIPAC, this is all public information (see list of recipients and the top contributor organizations). Likely as a result of this, for instance, the house recently passed a bill that expanded the definition of antisemitism to include the one from the IHRA, which includes "Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor." as an example of antisemitism.
Apparently bringing up that Israel needs to uphold the Nakba to continue to exist is hate speech now. Even if it and other claims regarding racism of early Zionist leaders is backed up by innumerable quotations from Zionist and Israeli leaders. This trouble was amplified following the recent protests at U.S colleges and universities. Federal, state and local institutions, as well as countless violent mobs of provocateurs and citizens started a relentless spree of attacking protestors, shutting down protests, suspending students, and demonizing them. The liberal facade of these colleges fell apart when faced with the voice of the students at America's (and the world's) brightest and most well-known institutions. Snipers on the rooftops at colleges in place to target protestors and the violence we saw against students is simply unacceptable. This is nothing new. The same exact thing happened when they protested the Vietnam war, the Iraq war, etc. There was also a leaked audio call (apparently later they claimed it was public) from Jonathan Greenblatt who is the CEO/director of the ADL complaining about Tiktok (Confirmation by ADL themselves as real here). Soon after the house passes a bill banning TikTok. Also your nations' representatives shouldn't be signing missiles with "finish them" (another similar example), when those same missiles can result in the killing of many civilians and children in the process even if military targets are said to be the focus. Like even if the strike was going to target a legit horrible person or terrorist but it would have a number of civilian casualties, making a joke out of it or signing the missiles is not normal behavior. Perhaps for politicians it is. Otherwise you'd need to get checked for signs of sociopathy or something. Thankfully Americans are generally more than aware of how absurd stuff like this is. I'm not even gonna touch on some proposals from U.S representatives to essentially ethnically cleanse Gaza.
I don't think people are naive enough to believe there will be a warm peace between Israelis and Palestinians, however, that is irrelevant since what's needed is a cold but functioning peace and its up to reasonable people to spread the word that their interests generally lie in a two-state solution. As we have demonstrated above militancy in disgusting forms as it has been shown by Hamas when it is not needed is not only evil but a hurdle to the cause and as we have shown above so long as you consistently keep trying to further oppress Palestinians the evil that is inflicted upon them will undoubtedly fall upon your heads as well, i.e “A nation cannot be free and at the same time continue to oppress other nations.” either by only flaming the fire of terrorism and political violence by frustrated Palestinians or by autocrats like Bibi choosing to keep expanding their gains.
What Needs to happen?

1. First and foremost Israelis need to keep up the momentum against Bibi and friends based not only on their stints with corruption and aspiring dictatorial rule but also their security failures. I don't really care that Israelis are Zionists or whatever and I am not expecting them to chant "from the river to the sea", in fact I think that would be a hindrance. At a minimum push for some degree of humility amongst Israelis that lets them self-reflect upon their choices and policies on Palestinians thus far. While the press is not free for Palestinians under Israeli rule it's quite free for Israelis themselves to push this forward. Perhaps under a new government don't pull your ambassadors from countries who choose to recognize a Palestinian state and don't have your representatives at the UN pull childish stunts comparing awarding Palestine with just more privileges, not full-fledged membership, with "rewarding modern-day Nazis". We can start there. Hamas is not being rewarded with anything but an existential war they're losing with tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths in the Gaza Strip. Not only is the Israeli right detrimental to Palestinians but these right-wing parties, particularly the religious parties, are unironically and openly striving to turn Israel into a halachic and authoritarian state with the Israelis getting the short end of the stick as well. If I was an Israeli I wouldn't even vote for them, I know I talk a lot about Israel's pseudo-democracy in reference to their treatment of Palestinians, but these people are genuinely trying to undermine whatever democracy is left for Jews as well, they are aspiring dictators who regularly and openly talking about how they would use the judicial reform to target certain political opponents. And by Israelis here I mean Arab Israelis as well. It is well known that a large number of Arab Israelis simply boycotted the last elections, In 2022 only 53.2% of arab-israelis took part in the elections. This is simply stupid, use your privilege not only to improve your situation in Israel and help elect non-right-wing parties (since your communities are plagued with issues like organized crime last I heard,. and you are getting stepped over every other day for social media posts.) but also be a voice for the Palestinians.
2. In concert with the movements above, Palestinians need to abandon virtually all forms of irredentism, if putting pressure on Abbas to hold elections doesn't work and if he somehow doesn't die soon, exerting overwhelming pressure on his clique and subsequently deposing him after formulating a rational party and re-amplifying voices of reasonable people like Salam Fayyad is a good move, I don't like pretending to be an armchair general or trying to "plan" or really propose coup d'etats but him and his clique are essentially parasites on Palestinians so any thought that goes into ending their rule is good. I am not happy about your grandparents' sufferings as a result of the Nakba, nor am I asking you to love Israel. What I am asking is for people to acknowledge that your best interests lie in a two state solution. A ton of Palestinians and pro-Palestinians celebrated the recent recognition of Palestine as a state by some countries, want more of this, with all that it entails more permanently? Salvaging what's left of Palestine is the best option. Everybody and their mother already knows the cost of Hamas' carelessness. While yes, Palestinian oppression didn't start on October 7th, this war certainly did.
3. People in the West, I suppose just use your voting power to vote for candidates who can advance your country, not that of foreign nations' wars over its own via necessarily shilling tax dollars on them, as well as people who believe in maintaining a peaceful resolution over expansionism.

I think (what Nietzsche called) the English understanding of religion represents a fundamental anti-religious sentiment, whereas what science is based on is a fundamentally religious sentiment.
I'm reading "Selective Breeding and the Birth of Philosophy" by Costin Alamariu, so I will quote a few passages that explain my thesis.
The "English" view:

For Hume a natural history of religion is possible because religion, and specifically primitive religion, though it has a root in the passions, nevertheless can be understood rationally, that is, on broadly utilitarian grounds. Action rooted in the passions may itself be "irrational," but it can nevertheless be comprehended rationally. The examples of irrationality that Hume invokes in his essay represent a series of logical mis-steps or errors by early man who, finding himself in a dangerous, confusing world, and living in insecurity and fear for his life, makes entirely wrong but entirely plausible mistakes about the character of natural forces, his relationship to them, and the possibility of assuaging them as they become personalized in the form of gods and demons. This "English view" is much the same as the position of the later James George Frazer, whose monumental work on the elements of the prehistoric and prephilosophical understanding is to be considered below. In this way of thinking, although the character of early religion is understood as irrational because based on passions, nevertheless these appear somehow to be available to rational comprehension, or calculation, because ancient man wanted much the same things as modern, civilized man. And it is possible to judge the character of religious belief scientifically, as it were, or naturally, that is, reducing it to a calculation comprehensible to scientific reason, even if, at bottom, the original calculation should be based on logical mistakes regarding the character of natural phenomena, and on passionate desires. These desires themselves are available to natural or scientific analysis. Which is to say, an external position may be taken to understanding the character of early religion and therefore of early convention. And so religion itself seems to grow out of morality, perhaps as an idelogical superstructure for moral needs---if only a utilitarian or hedonistic morality.

The Nietzschean view:

Nietzsche rejects this vision as "English." As Strauss points out, Nietzsche does not believe in "a science of morals which teaches the only true morality," and this specifically includes rational or utilitarian morality: rather for Nietzsche what is natural is only the binding or burdening of man to precisely unnatural and unreasonable laws. "Over and against the ruinous permissiveness of anarchism Nietzsche asserts that precisely long lasting obedience to unnatural and unreasonable nomoi is the 'moral imperative of nature.' Physis calls for nomoi while preserving the distinction, nay, opposition of physis and nomos."[^79] Nietzsche's rejection of a rational morality is based on his rejection of a utilitarian morality; it is precisely the binding of man to arbitrary, even absurd laws, to laws which serve no particular benefit, that is the character of morality. Religion, premodern polytheism then, cannot emerge out of a utilitarian morality as in the model of Hume. Peoples themselves are the result of the founding acts of creative prophets; much as in Rousseau, Nietzsche believes such prophets or founders---legislators in the highest sense---are the origin therefore of mores and conventions by which peoples live. In this task the founder uses religion, but the religious experience of such founders, and by extension religious experience in general, is therefore not reducible to calculation of benefit or of self-interest. And even in cases where a primitive tribal morality emerges out of the necessities of daily life, it's not possible to reduce this only to the satisfaction of rational material desires or needs because man is often more motivated instead by pride, by the need for distinction, by the need for superiority over neighbors, by the need to subsume individual to group, and often to do so for entirely irrational reasons that merely reaffirm morality for the sake of morality. Hence Nietzsche's famous example of Kamchatka natives at Dawn 16 where useless commandments are emphasized; or his more famous treatment of the non-utilitarian origin of all enduring moral codes in Zarathustra "Of The Thousand and One Goals."

Here, the author attempts to find common ground and then resolve differences:

In fine, although according to Strauss, it appears that in some limited sense both Nietzsche and Hume agree that the experience of fear or terror is the "original" primitive experience, they differ substantially on how early man responded to this experience. The matter of prephilosophic mind and religion is straightforward for Hume and in general for "English psychologists" because it has a basis in a rational, preservationist, utilitarian morality; but it is a complicated matter for Nietzsche because it cannot be determined by such calculation. Nietzsche, while appreciating the cynicism and the "shoving the partie honteuse of our inner world into the foreground" of the English psychologists believes they on one hand do not go far enough in revealing the shameful, irrational, and even violent origins of morality; while, on the other hand, they are incapable of understanding the variety in human nature and therefore the heights (and depths) that human nature can reach. This is in part because of their commitment to a utilitarian (and therefore already a democratic) morality, and in part because of their lack of a "historical sense," which makes the English historians of morality incapable of producing accurate genealogies. They assume that premodern men were similar to modern Englishmen in their passions, not seeing that different men desire different things, and in particular that the desire for glory is fundamentally different from the desire for comfort. They therefore misunderstand the prephilosophic mind, believing it to be fundamentally motivated by self-interest, benefit, calculation, comfort, tit-for-tat reciprocity.

This is my simple model of what is being proposed:

• Opinion A: Morality, by way of religion, is created.
• Opinion B: Morality, by way of religion, is discovered.

Opinion A's view is that man is disconnected from nature, and he acts (sort of like a god, if you pardon the expression) in the abstract, which doesn't exist as part of nature either.
Opinion B's view is that man is connected to nature, and he communes with the abstract, which exists as part of nature.
I have a few thoughts:

• Opinion A could lead to one creating propaganda but could never lead to one becoming religious. Identifying its superficial structure (in your view) would defeat any interest in keeping to it.
• Opinion B is the Platonic view. The realm of the abstract is a fundamental part of that worldview.
• Opinion B is what scientists use to theorize about the nature of the world. For instance, if Darwin believed morality is created and abstract ideas are merely created, then what would have driven him to develop the idea of a hidden force of evolution?
• Opinion A is used by atheists to denigrate the superficiality of religion, whereas Opinion B necessitates some level of respect even when certain things are "wrong", as they reveal fundamental (discovered) truths.
• Opinion A is the attitude of churches and other large establishments which claim authority over truth. They do not allow truth to be discovered followers, but moreover, they do not teach the epistemology of discovered truth because they place their own primacy over nature.
• Opinion B could lead to the perception that everything which can be discovered, has already been discovered, so there is an additional belief required to keep the spirit of the philosophy alive: that there is more to be discovered. This is essentially a Faustian philosophy.

Lastly, we arrive at what may seem like an arbitrary use of definitions to repeat my thesis on "the nature of religion":

• True Religion is that which is believed, not merely asserted.
• Original Religion must have been True Religion, otherwise it would not have been popular and sustained itself (particularly without written tradition).
• Original Religion must have contained the belief that its value system was discovered in nature, rather than created outside of it. This includes the idea that people are part of nature and subject to the laws of nature, as well as the notion that "nature" is not a fixed target but an ever changing one that can be improved, with thought from humans. This may constitute the most special part of being human.
• Current Religion, which prevails over Theist and Atheist alike, is that religion is mandated, not discovered. Theists view this mandate from god, through the church establishment. Atheists view it the same way, but with more disrespect for the church establishment and doubt the existence of said deity.
• As a result, society has lost its way. The philosophy that led to the growth of science (and the growth of philosophy) is somewhat dead in society today. We do not believe in discovering nature. We believe in asserting it, then amassing enough power to shut up our dissenters. We have people who assert deities (with calls to authority), people who assert human nature (such as sexual and gender ideology, on the basis of logical reasoning, not discovery), and people who assert physical nature (without willingness to modify it, such as in the environmentalist movement).
• The reinvigoration of the salons, the forums, and the academies will require a closer commitment to nature. This means an awareness of that which comes from nature, a belief in our tendency to discover it (rather than create it), and a humble willingness to then create that which does not violate the prior discoveries.
• Violations of nature should be things we can predict by having a connectedness to reality. Not being able to foresee said violations of nature, or not being willing to, is the kind of hubris that leads to the downfall of people and of society.

Honestly don’t even know what to do anymore. Leaving it all doesn’t seem like such a far out idea anymore. It all just seems to get worse and then ease a little then just get even worse. My dad’s always flipping his shit. And it fucking blows. The one person who actually loved me unconditionally was my mother. And last year on march 25 she succumbed to brain cancer. I was always hopeful it wouldn’t happen but it did. She was awesome, always loving, never unreasonable about anything, and she would have NEVER done anything to hurt me. I miss and love her so much. Living pretty poor, dads got crazy credit card debt. He’s always flipping his shit anymore. I’m always doing something wrong, and then he rants about how everyone is against him. And he is crazy abt it to bc like bruh nobody is out to get us or you. But I think he’s manipulative, idk if it’s on purpose or if he’s jus t a sociopath. Seems like when I talk he doesn’t give a shit. It’s always half responses and a lot of time he’ll just ignore it or start talking abt something else. Today he flipped his shit on me. Not the first time and not even the worst. But I’m fucking done. I want to run away but idk what I’d do and I don’t want to leave my sister behind and I don’t want to put her in the situation of running away. Today we went out to work. I thought it was gonna be a good day and we was just going to enjoy working. No. It wasn’t. We was having good conversations and just having a good time. For context we work with firewood. We cut it and sell it in pickup truck loads. We get some work done and then he moves onto the next tree. So I sit on the truck tailgate while I wait for him to get some wood down. He got a little cut and I was expecting that he was going to throw it down a little bit for me to take to the truck. Not unreasonable or nothing because that is literally what we just fucking did. So I’m just chilling there waiting for that. And then he looks down at me and condescendingly says “it ain’t gonna get done by you sitting there”. I didn’t like that but I was willing to fix my fuck up and get to work. I get up there again and he’s keeping on and on with his bullshit. He then starts comparing me to my mother. This is what bothered me. He was talking abt how they would have it done in like an hour and a half when they was doing it. This was fucked up to me. She was hard working. EXTREMELY hard working, it was awesome. But it made me feel like shit having him tell me how much slower I am. And honestly it’s an unrealistic expectation, she was like a beast in her work. Not to be little professional victim here but hearing this was just a reminder that she’s dead. So that pissed me off and I kind of started dissociating a little bi. So I stop talking and just keep working. And when I’m taking the wood to the truck he keeps thanking me in this almost sarcastic way. So I just keep quiet because what th fuck yk? And then he’s all like did I hurt your feelings son?? In the same borderline sarcasm. So I just say “huh??” Bc I didn’t want to talk abt it. We keep working he seems alright. Then near the end of the load he said something and it kind of prompted what I had been thinking about saying anyways. So I said it “I’m not mad or anything and I don’t mind you telling me to get to work and I like working as hard as I can. But I prefer not to be compared to my mom.” He looked at me like I was fucking crazy. Starts getting all pissed off about it. I don’t remember exactly what he said because I was doing my best to just dissociate because I didn’t want to start crying because he would’ve really flipped then, but he wasn’t super mad just yet. We are just abt to get done working and he just stops and fucking stares at me while I’m tossing the wood towards the truck to put it in. So I ask him (without showing any sense of attitude and as nicely as possible) “do you want me to just carry it and load it into the truck”. You think he was reasoblar? Fuck no. He flipped. He was like “you can do whatever you want but I can tell you are so trying to be as difficult as possible.” So I start trying to de escalate the situation. And he wants all the fucking smoke. Keep in mind I never argue back to him because if I did idk what he would say. Then he starts guilt tripping me and telling me abt how much he gives to me and how he has absolutely no time to do anything he wants (maybe stop being a Facebook addict?) and then he tells me and I quote “idk where the fuck you think you’re coming from saying that” and he’s trying to make me feel crazy and honestly that’s why I’m making this post because I don’t know if I’m in the wrong. But he continues the guilt trip and makes sure to remind me that my mother will always be on my mind. And then he hits me with this “so who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong?” BRO FUCK YOU WHAT DO YOU THINK??? So I just reply “you, you’re in the right” because I just wanted it to end. He stars de escalating but is still being mean as fuck. Then he starts giving me his dog shit life advic. And was acting like nothing was wrong, even making jokes. Then he starts telling me how I shouldn’t be listening to deftones because their message isn’t whole (he was playing heretic anthem last night????? 666, that’s whole? But eventually he seems to just forget abt all he had just said and was acting all nice again. He was also saying I was insulting him when he was most heated. I am so fucking sick of it. I can feel my mental slipping and tbh, recently I’ve kind of developed an ideation for sui. And it almost feel like whateve fucking bipolar he has is rubbing off on me. Just so fucking sick of it. Am I crazy? Is he really in the right? What should I do?

So this going to be long, i'll try to summerize as much as possible. SO! While growing up i was 3rd child, and usually i've played alone cz everyone was busy. As i was growing more, my parents expected me to have all perfect grades since ,,i dont do nothing trough the house" mind you i was a damn kid, and the only time they ,teach me' is trough yelling. By the time i tried to uphold perfect grades i've been bullied (like actually) ngl it would be rarepy physical but i was humiliated so much trough life i feel numb at this point.
I never opened up to them, bcz we barely spend time together, and whenever i had different opinion i'd be laughed, mocked upon. So i didnt bother anymore. I was scared to tell them about bullying cz they yelled and always minimize my feelings. I never gotten outside - YES - to hang out properly, i never asked for something big, or money, or anything really.....and i was called spoiled.
So at high-school after so many ongoing belitlment to the point i've received comemnts like ,,you'll be no one and nothing, i regret giving bearth to you..." one they it clicked and i started standing up for myself.
And ever since then it gotten worse..... At first i was being respectful and then turned onto me cussing specially at dad. He is very manipulative, twists narrative and everyone follows him despite not liking his attitude cz he is a ,provider' of family. The only time in my life, he was to ridicule.
Anyways, is started as emotional thing trough physical abuse. Desk on the floor, throwing things, punching me and kicking, holding my neck - and telling me how i should be grateful for not being killed just bcz he can..... It gotten to point where i ran away multiple tomes, got 2 of phone broken cz i wanted to call the police and had evidance.
What hurts me tho, my mom who was also abused by him in the past, he was sticking by his side and pointing fingers at me that i was the one peovoking him so i deserve it.
Never once ever anyone tough of maaaybe calling the police??
Im now 23 and deeply regret listening to my teacher who told me i quote ,,he does that bcz he loves you". I've been gaslight by peiple so much and all i have is resentment and hatred towards him.
We are now in more advanced country, and i've tried being extra responsible ,,cz i was not before" and guys.......
After all cooking something special (so they have breakfast, dinner AND take it at work - take time to make stuff like this), cleaning, picking up my little sister from school walking cz we cant afford car, sacrifise my free time, space to make new friends, i have bo friends except online, no money, no real life support. All cz i was honest, standing up for my rights and im just sad and miserable.
I do have confidence but it hurts that i'll the only time i'll be acknowledged is when i get successful on my own. And guess what i live in such culture that HE will take all the credit for it. Im sick of this!
There so many things that has happened but this is the fastest i can tell. Thanks for everyone that read my desperate venting but yes im devistated that i look like i have a family but i really do not.....
P. S.S. - Extra points = My family told me to keep quiet about this while dad has been telling everyone that i was being rebellious and was provoking him (which makes it even harder to my my part of story beliable since the evidances are gone) .....all i wanted is an apology, and him stop blaming other for his mistakes
So pleaseee! If ANYONE starts to think ,,He/she said/will change" i'm here tot ell you they will NEVER! Unfortunately YES your family indeed can be selfish.
Do not let your understanding become enabling. Peace.

i’m 16 and just recently got my first tattoo done, a smallish back piece that i was originally quoted 150-180 at most and took 20 ish minutes. i would like to start this by saying i work in food service so i understand the tipping, and always tip when going out for food or getting my nails done. anyways back to the story, i made this appointment over a month in advance and sent them multiple images on what i wanted and said i wanted it done in red ink. however, when i got there we sat for 20 minutes before he even acknowledged my mom and i’s existence. then when he finally did, we weren’t even greeted, he abruptly asks “are you here for a piercing or a tattoo?” i told him i had an appointment for a tattoo he asks “where?” i said “i was hoping to get one on my lower back” he then doesn’t say anything for a few minutes and scrolls on a laptop and goes “_____?” (my name). He’s like “can you show me what you want, I haven’t looked yet.” Despite him having over a month to look at my inspiration pictures. So I was scrolling through the photos with him on my phone assuming he would draw something similar on the spot (as i heard it was offensive to bring other artists work) and then he was rudely like “slow down. ok airdrop that black and white one to me” (the inspo pic i liked the least ofc) so basically he just used another artists work when i wanted something original as ive seen multiple people with it but i let it slide because it was nice enough. and he was like “any colour?” and i was like “i wanted it in red possibly” and he basically told me it would look bad on me because i’m a POC. So we did it in black. As I was getting the tattoo he told me most people my age sit very bad for tattoos and can’t take it? however i sat still for 99% of the appointment however when he got closer to my spine i accidentally flinched a little and he was like “do you have any control over that?” like i get its hard to to tattoo if i’m moving, however that was the first time, and it was also my first tattoo entirely. Once it was done, he didnt provide good aftercare instructions and just rushed it. When it was time to pay he asked me what I was quoted and I said “Whoever I was emailing said it would be $150-$180 with the deposit” so what’d he try to do? he tried to charge me $250 on the spot. then when i said something he finally changed it to $180, then i had to ask “is that with the deposit?” before he finally changed it to $130. although i was not impressed with his attitude to begin with, i was still willing to tip as i came for the service not the attitude, until he tried to charge me $120 extra. i do not plan on going back there even for a touch up. am i in the wrong for not tipping?

This post is part of a series of reviews. To see them all, click here.
Historical information found on Shannon O'Sullivan's Doctor Who website (relevant page here and the TARDIS Wiki (relevant page here). Primary/secondary source material can be found in the source sections of O'Sullivan's website, and rarely as inline citations on the TARDIS Wiki.

Serial Information

• Episodes: Season 19, Episodes 9-12
• Airdates: 1st - 9th February 1982
• Doctor: 5th
• Companions: Adric, Nyssa (episodes 1,4), Tegan
• Writer: Christopher Bailey
• Director: Peter Grimwade
• Producer: John Nathan-Turner
• Script Editor: Eric Saward

Review

What is the one thing that evil cannot face, not ever? (…) Itself. – The Doctor
Kinda is a story with a bit of an unusual history of its audience reception. Initially written off by fans, and voted worst of Season 19's stories in the Doctor Who Monthly magazine's yearly poll ranking Season 19's stories in 1982, it has seen since seen a slow climb up in fans' estimations, to the point that it now frequently ranks among people's favorite 5th Doctor stories. And so the question remains. Did the fans of 1982 have it right? Or does it deserve this extraordinary rise in fans' estimation?
Eh…kinda.
Okay yes, I had to do that for the bit, but also, yeah Kinda did deserve some reevaluation in my estimation, but I do think it's a highly flawed story. Ideas presented in Kinda feel somewhat underdeveloped. Or maybe just presented in a way that is unnecessarily obfuscating the writer's intention? I don't know exactly, but while I like large parts of this story, to the point that I think it's the best of the season so far (not a massive bar to clear, but not an insubstantial one either), something about it feels off.
Kinda leans very heavily into religious themes, specifically Buddhist concepts with a Garden of Eden framing (second time in as many season we done of Garden of Eden allegory). What this means in a more practical sense is many of the scenes of the story are abstract, literal dreams or highly symbolic. Or you know visions of the future that are also the past. The thing is, I'm not sure that any of this contributes much more than atmosphere. Atmosphere is important of course, I don't want to discount that. And Kinda gets a lot of mileage out of creating its surreal atmosphere. I've praised stories like The Mind Robber or Warriors' Gate for this kind of atmosphere in the past. And, to be clear, Kinda is, by in large, a good story. But there comes a point when watching it where I just feel like the point of the surreal imagery is that it's surreal, and there's no other reason for it.
On the other hand, this is an absolutely fascinating story at times. Playing around with a number of cultural expectations, the titular Kinda people (named by the other group of people for their childlike qualities) do not speak, leading the people colonizing the planet of Deva Loka to assume that they are a simple, unintelligent people. In reality though they have telepathic communication, also a select number of their women (well, two to be exact) can speak, also also apparently they have some understanding of what DNA is and how it works. The Kinda culture is fairly complex, and somewhat unusually for a show like this, we get at least a halfway decent understanding of it.
On the other side of the spectrum, we have those colonizers I mentioned earlier. Adorned in literal pith helmets, they appear to be generally unconcerned with the lives of the Kinda and uninterested in what culture they may have. There are only three of them when we meet them, but that's because several others have died in the forests. And yet they persist on a planet that clearly doesn't want them there because that's just kind of the logic of colonialism. We've seen colonial allegories on this show before of course, most recently in The Power of Kroll. But Kinda's approach feels different. We'll get into the specifics of the characters involved, but suffice it to say two of the three of them are broad caricatures. It gives Kinda's colonizers less gravitas, but as they aren't the main villains of the piece, it actually works quite well.
Because the real focus of Kinda isn't on the Kinda or the people who've arrived to take over their planet but rather on the Mara. It's why Tegan ends up in a dream sequence. Because she's dreaming in a specific spot with these odd wind chimes, she ends up dreaming herself into a liminal space between our dimension and the Mara's home dimension. there Dukkha tricks her into letting the Mara into our dimension through her. In case you weren't clear from the Mara represented by a snake tattoo that this is a Garden of Eden allegory, the first thing the Mara-possessed Tegan does is throw apples at someone.
Much of the story is built on this kind of thing. There's an empty box that if any man looks into it they get driven out of their minds (which for some is a good thing). Women are fine, but even the Doctor gets a bit of a psychic buzz from it. According to Kinda wise woman Panna all of this has happened before, always ending with the Mara taking control. One of the colonizers, Hindle, manages to take control of two Kinda using a mirror, which foreshadows how the Doctor ultimately defeats the Mara, but the story is also very unclear as to why it works. As mentioned above, I don't love this story's approach to its more surreal and spiritual elements, but it does give Kinda its unique atmosphere.
So, characters. Beginning with our three colonizers. Sanders is the man in control of their expedition. He's not good at his job, to put it mildly. He is, in keeping with the general tone of the story around these guys, a bit of a buffoon, who insists on following his gut rather than listening to those around him. We don't get much of him in this early state mind you, because he is given the box in episode 2 and spends the rest of the story being perfectly pleasant if more than a bit childish. Still his last action was arguably his worst: he put Hindle in charge.
Hindle is the base security officer. He has also, by the time we meet him, completely broken down due to the strain. As mentioned before, this expedition has already lost several members. As security officer, Hindle wants to tighten security, and play things strictly by the rules. Two problems with that. The first is that his commanding officer is Sanders and he's not interested in facing reality. The other is that Hindle is losing his grip on reality, with the end result being…well I'm not sure exactly what's going on with Hindle throughout this frankly. By the end of the first episode he's already engaging in a form of megalomania. He's also already got control of those two Kinda I mentioned, and it…seems to be effecting him? Making him more unbalanced? Why? I don't know, but what happens to Hindle over the course of the story is perplexing.
He starts going mad with power, but in a way that feels like some sort of outside force is affecting him. He seems to believe that the trees on the Deva Loca are out to get him and so intends to destroy them with fire and acid ("If in doubt, then fire and acid every time, don't you think," the Doctor notes sarcastically). And all the while he becomes more and more childish. I mean that quite literally by the way, at a certain point Hindle starts behaving like a literal, 8 year old child. If Kinda's biggest issue is that things feel a bit too abstract, what happens to Hindle is exhibit A. Not only do I not know what's happening to him, I don't even feel like I'm given the tools to guess. He does eventually look into the box, and comes out the side a much more balanced person. He and Sanders seem genuinely content at the end of the story. How nice for them.
But there is one member of the expedition who isn't turned into a childish version of themself by the end of the story. Todd (that's her last name, no first name is given to any of the three colonizers) is the expedition's Scientist. I wrote Scientist with a capital "S" because she's one of those classic every discipline scientists. Honestly she behaves more like an anthropologist than anything else. Todd's curiosity about the Kinda leads her to realizing that they aren't as unsophisticated as Sanders and Hindle believe. As such Todd ends up being, by a pretty wide margin, the most sympathetic member of the guest cast. She's curious, and so naturally gels well with the Doctor and friends. I liked Todd, she came off as both relatable and capable.
The Kinda are mostly a mute group, and while they have individual personalities, they can be hard to distinguish due to their primarily telepathic communication. However the three that speak do stand out. Getting him out of the way, Aris is the Kinda who is eventually taken over by the Mara. One of the Kinda who was taken by the colonizers was Aris' brother, and as a result, Aris wants revenge, which we learn by having Karuna (one of the other three speaking Kinda) translate for him telepathically. It's at that point that Tegan, under the control of the Mara, exploits that desire for revenge and passes the power of the Mara over to him. A male Kinda with a voice is otherwise impossible, and so the other Kinda briefly follow him. Aris isn't a particularly well developed character, but I thought that Adrian Mills gave a really strong performance as him, especially once the Mara took over.
Panna and Karuna are the two Kinda who naturally have the power of speech, Panna being an old woman and Karuna being a young girl. As the leader of a highly matriarchal society, Panna's big role in this story is to call the Doctor an "idiot" or a "male fool". It can be a bit grating, but also there is some fun to be had in a character who is fully unimpressed with the Doctor. Karuna, being as young as she is, is a bit more open, but is also more susceptible to the Mara's influence. But Panna dies at a crucial moment and passes her experiences down to her apprentice. It's probably also worth noting that Aris is one of Karuna's several fathers (a situation that the Doctor describes as "extravagant"). These two didn't grab me as characters too much, other than the aforementioned fun relationship between the Doctor and Panna.
It helps that the Doctor is completely unbothered by her dismissive attitude. While Four to Doomsday did a very poor job at showing the 5th Doctor's personality, instead making him out to be a very ineffectual leader, Kinda does a lot better in this regard. He's still more passive than prior Doctors, but in a way that comes off as more canny. He's standing back and watching, taking in information and only intervening when it is either absolutely necessary or he has a full understanding of what's going on (must be nice). He humors Hindle and Sanders when he doesn't have to confront them, lets Panna insult him because he doesn't care enough to change her perception of him, but absorbs enough information to, at the end, defeat the giant snake version of the Mara. I really liked how the 5th Doctor was written in this story, and I do think it does alleviate some of the problems introduced from the last one.
Adric also has a better story than last time, although he could hardly have a worse one. To get the obvious out of the way, we are once again having Adric seeming to side with villains, in this case Hindle. Fortunately it's a ruse but still, that is four out of seven stories that we've done this plot (I may have overcounted last review), and it just no long holds any weight. However, his interactions with Hindle are, at the very least, a bit more substantial than this plot normally lets them be. Trying desperately to manage Hindle increasingly fragile emotional state, help the Doctor behind Hindle's back and generally being crafty, if there's a story that succeeds at demonstrating the rogueish side of Adric's personality, it's this one. He's still not getting along with Tegan, but even that feels a lot more light-hearted and banter-filled as opposed to the genuinely hateful relationship they had last time.
Now Tegan does spend roughly half of the story being possessed by the Mara. The dream sequences leading up to this point are the trippiest part of the story, and unfortunately, I don't think we learn much about her from this, in spite of a particular memory of hers coming up in the process of it. I think the issue is that the stuff she's going through doesn't feel particularly personalized: it's a terror that could realistically affect anyone. She is, after all, being tricked into giving up body to the Mara, so I think there was room to do a little bit more specific to Tegan there. That being said, once she's returned from her trance and the Mara controlling her body, we do get some fun stuff out of her. Her embarrassment at dropping apples on Aris, even though she thinks it's just a dream, is quite funny. And after the fact, her terror at seeing the Mara implies that the experience has left a mark of her, something which will be explored in future. Also, I have to give credit to Janet Fielding, for very effectively playing the role of the villain while Tegan was controlled by the Mara. A really strong performance out of her here.
Kinda feels like a much better introduction to the 5th Doctor era proper than the last story, in spite of the fact that Nyssa misses the entire story. The cast are gelling together much better, at their relationship feels a lot more functional. The story is…a bit much at times, but on the whole an enjoyable affair. I don't know that I'd say that Kinda belongs near the top of the 5th Doctor's stories, as has become the consensus, but definitely not the worst of the season, and certainly a very memorable story no matter what you want to say about it.
Score: 7/10

Stray Observations

• Nyssa misses, essentially, the entirety of this story, the first time since the black and white era that a companion missed even a single episode of the show (discounting UNIT characters and K-9, obviously). The script for Kinda was completed before Nyssa was cast, and Sarah Sutton's contract was only for 24 episodes in Season 19, hence her absence. Apparently Sutton used the time off to do some shopping.
• There's a lot of references to Buddhism in this one, both in some of the concepts, and most of the names used in the story, aside from the colonist trio. For whatever it's worth, writer Christopher Bailey regretted the heavy use of Buddhist names in the story. To quote him, "if you were making a Japanese show, you'd think twice about calling one of the characters Jesus Christ."
• Bailey was also generally unhappy with a lot of the effects in the story, and disliked the looks of the actors playing the natives.
• This was Janet Fielding's favorite script. Peter Davison loved the script as well, and gave a possible reason why Fielding might have loved it so much: it gave her something to do besides be angry at the Doctor.
• Eric Saward is credited as Script Editor on this one, but it was also commissioned by Christopher H. Bidmead and Anthony Root did major work on the script before it was passed on to Saward, meaning that the script was worked on by three different Script Editors.
• The colonial themes and the pith helmets were producer John Nathan-Turner's idea.
• There's an entire scene in episode 4 that essentially amounts to Tegan and Adric fretting about whether the Doctor can get the explosives out of Hindle's control and Adric repeating variations of "We should do something" on loop to which Tegan inevitably responds with a variation of "there's nothing we can do" on a loop. Entirely pointless scene, clearly there to fill up the runtime.

Next Time: The Doctor finally gets Tegan to Heathrow! It hasn't been built yet, but, as they say, you can never be too early.