So first up, I don't see the Overton window as one that can be manipulated or gamed, I think the Overton window is descriptive. Okay in 1997 if you told people you believe the Earth is flat you probably couldn't get a discussion going. The Overton window shifted sufficiently by 2014 that people could get discussions going on flat-earth theories because the internet facilitates user groups forming communities so conversion becomes possible based on a critical mass.
In the early 2000s when I first entered the professional world, the Australian housing market was heating up. One of the best selling books was "From 0 to 130 properties in 3.5 years" and the mood was feverish, within the first month of starting this blog, I wrote my first piece on how property was mishandled by Australian tax codes, from memory only a day or two after my first exposure to the ideas of Henry George who's book "Progress & Poverty" I have never to this day read.
Back in 2006 I would say to question the Australian obsession with property investment was fringe. I mean I literally was going into this dank office of an NGO where there were like all 14 people in a city of 5 million or so who were enthusiastic about discussing land speculation.
The thing was, Australia would declare from time to time a number of housing affordability crises and for a change of pace rental vacancy crises. However, the Overton window was tight, the situation was always caused because population was growing faster than the supply of housing. There were two clear solutions - cutting back on immigration and removing red tape on new housing construction.
"It's simple" declared red faced politicians on ABC S&M programming Q&A "Supply and demand. If prices are going up it's because demand exceeds supply, therefore..." and I have no strong association with any side of politics, "...we need more houses/less people."
For a frustrating period of my life, I had a reductive view. Early on I assumed that the end of the situation must be imminent, the overton window didn't matter, I could just conclude from the facts that the Australian property market was going to collapse. It never did, and I was confronted with what I could not understand.
Certainly by 2008~2009 I gave up on trying to predict the catastrophic deflation of the Australian Housing Bubble. I saw the Rudd government pull out all the stops to prevent any loss of enthusiasm for property investment in Australia, such that when the pandemic came in 2019 I was actually interim manager of the organization that introduced me to Henry George and none of us expected the Melbourne or Australian housing market to crash.
I can only speak for myself, but by 2009 I had changed my model to one in which I hold that Australian's simply lack the imagination and enterprising spirit to invest in anything but property. Personally I was convinced, and to a degree still am though for different reasons that all focus and energy should be expended on getting average Australian's to think about property investment at all.
Something I left out of my post on culture shock, coming back from 3 straight years living in Mexico, because I didn't notice it in my early months of return is that the Overton window has dramatically shifted. In Australia people will discuss on forums like Q&A even posing questions to the federal treasurer about curbing property investment as a return to the housing market.
Part of the shift is definitely global, Georgists are popping up everywhere and will even call themselves such. There's been networking by housing advocates in the US, Canada and UK at the least that have got their ideas into the heads of podcast guests who comment on the economy.
Australia does seem fairly isolated however, I base this on the Median house price in San Francisco as of July 2024 being 1.2M USD now roughly 1.77M AUD just an hours drive from the San Jose headquarters of NVidia and Apple, Google etc. The median house price in Sydney Australia is $1.1M AUD just a short drive from...Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Australia's highest cap company whose primary business is lending money for property investment. Then there's BHP at number two cap, a mining company.
House prices in SF are crazy, but they could be seen as a function of the high wages paid by the world's most valuable companies. The desire of young STEM graduates all over the world to go there and get rich by 25.
Prices in Australia are so bananas they are practically pineapples. Youtube news-explainer channel TLDR did a story on Australia's economy that speaks so candidly about the Australian property market that it likely would come as news to many Australians.
Do I expect anything to change? Not dramatically, but what I'm saying is, that it has already dramatically shifted just for anyone to be saying that the housing market's problems might be caused by housing "investment" which to me indicates not that I am some uncredited profit, but that likely it is symptomatic of greater numbers of people finding the Australian social contract unfeasible.
Which is to say, I suspect post-Covid inflation shifted the window, more so than 16 years of reporting on housing vacancy by Prosper though I do think the speculative Vacancy report provided important scenery out the Overton Window for discussing, particularly with high profile youtubers like Friendly Jordies.doing good explainers that maybe the common sense story of supply-demand that assumes away market inefficiency helps a lot too.
That said, I don't think humans anywhere are naturally cut out to understand concepts like paper-wealth such that the idea that assets you think you have could be revalued in a way that wealth simply vanishes just isn't going to be intuited.
I think most people if the only difference between having $10M in the bank as cash and $10M in investment property is that next year $10M cash would be worth $9M because inflation and the houses will be worth $11.4M because magic.
Shove in the "Bezzle" from "embezzlement" which unwilling to go find the relevant explainer video from Patrick Boyle whose channel is excellent, so I'll just make a third-hand hash of it. You think your business has $2000 in the cash register, unbeknownst to you your employee has embezzled $1000 over the weekend since you last balanced the books. As such, that employee has $1000 that they know they can spend, and you believe yourself to have $2000 creating a $1000 bezzle of money people treat as if it exists. At some point, say Monday evening when you count up the money in the register after COB the disparity is discovered, at which point you have to say "oh fuck I can't pay back that short term loan."
Now I don't know what the bezzle created by Australian banks creating money to loan to people to buy Australian housing is. The Australian property market was valued at $10 trillion dollars, 3~4x times more valuable than the entirety of Australian publicly listed companies, and 3~4x times more valuable than a years worth of finished goods produced by the country.
My position for 14 years has more or less been, if there's no good reason for property to be worth $10 trillion, then there's no good reason it can't be worth $5 trillion or $20 trillion. We are simply observing behaviour. Again, I would rest upon the general observation that despite the shift in the Overton window, Australia's obsession with property could be considered an analogue to religiosity. Most Australians cannot imagine investing in something other than property. They will refer to owning a piece of a business that generates profits as "gambling" (the stock market) and given the rational case against theology has been overdetermined for centuries, I doubt Australian attitudes will significantly budge soon.
Furthermore, while it is distasteful to live in a society were rentiers are so esteemed and watching them populate the proliferating wine bars to celebrate their unearned wealth, people who own multiple properties aka "property investors" are likely a small minority. The worst thing is that they have meant people who buy homes to live in and raise children and be families are forced to speculate on their own homes through artificially restricted supply and artificially inflated prices.
A housing crash will devestate good and honest people. Probably for a decade or so, I have come to realize there would be no Schadenfreude for me if the Australian property market were to rationalize or correct. The sooner it does, the least apocalyptic it would be, but we have long passed the point where deleveraging could be described as a bump in the road.
Some days life serves you up a huge steaming turd. Yes, we have a problem and that problem is bog standard human psychology because when we investigate a huge steaming turd we discover a defiance of the laws of nature - what produced that huge steaming turd was a smaller less offensive turd.
I am talking, of course about the attention given to Rachael "Raygun" Gunn's Olympic breaking performance. A performance for which, without any aid of public discourse I feel almost anyone could watch 10~30 seconds of and broadly understand exactly what happened, what needs to happen and really be done with it. Were we sober. But we are not. This is the shit we get high off, and that is our insurmountable problem.
By the end of the Paris Olympics, I was all like "yay Olympics" they are a great thing though perhaps not worth the price of admission. Dubious sports and all. I was likely my most interested since Sydney 2000 where the games were staged perfectly in my time zone and coincided with school holidays where I could just lay on a couch and watch it all day.
Anyway, Paris introduced "breaking" as a sport. I'm not a fan, or at least sit uneasily with subjective competitions. Like gymnastic floor routines with the ball, hoop or ribbon where a panel of judges have to observe and score on multiple criteria and then eliminate the top and bottom scores and blah blah blah.
I saw some of the gymnastic floor routines, and even an ignoramus like me can understand that despite the artistic expression, costumes, pageantry there's clearly an athletic competition in the mix. Remove the ribbons, balls and hoops and it becomes more obvious in the case of an athlete like Simone Biles. Furthermore, there's only so much innovation one can reasonably expect out of three props that have been featured at Olympics since Stalin and Hitler were around.
By comparison, let's consider Roller Derby as an Olympic sport. A popular competition exists that has a lot of tacked on culture that I'm tempted in all cases to refer to as bullshit. Like someone can't compete as Sarah Johnson but needs to compete as "Mean Machine" that kind of bullshit. Outside the Olympics I think the culture around roller derby helps to keep the sport a women's space, it has a definite sexualized punk vibe even though from what I've observed the sexualization of Roller Derby does not serve to promote beauty ideals. Barge sized women will be in hot pants and fishnets.
I would expect that to qualify as an Olympic sport Roller Derby may need to permit a men's competition, for which I would expect the hyperfeminisation of the sport to be removed. People would compete in much the same uniforms that they compete in tennis, basketball, cycling or ice skating in.
Breaking was clearly brought in as a spectacle, preserving much of the cultural bullshit including performance names. Though theoretically the same as sports like gymnastics, synchronized swimming, ice dancing, figure skating, diving etc. Cultural artefacts were preserved for the competition like having competitors "live react" and diss their competitor on stage. One was invited to buy into the fun and pageantry rather than treat breaking soberly like a sport. This is true of the women's gold medal match and the men's gold medal match with presumably expert commentators dropping insight like "one of the hypest songs you can get in a gold medal match..."
Now the big steaming turd inserted into the debut sport of "breaking" was Australian women's competitor "Raygun" who scored 0 points and sucked up all the oxygen. Whatever there is to say about this flash in the pan, it is almost certain that too much will be said.
It is likely simply a story of incompetence built on incompetence, built on incompetence in a manner many people find hard to believe. The existential fear "mere incompetence" cannot be overstated, it is somewhat the basis of all conspiracy theories and the adamantanes of the conspiracists because people breaking things deliberately is much more comforting than things just breaking because we collectively are not good enough at what we do.
The first incompetence is importing break dance competitions into the Olympics. Now, there are numerous events that are popular and draw crowds and it's not always obvious what those events will be. Surfing is evergreen in terms of popularity but it is a much harder sport to spectate compared to beach volleyball on account of taking place offshore. I think indoor climbing will remain. Will the Olympics try fucking quidditch, bike polo or hacky sack?
Culturally surfing is Hawaiian but the modern sport was popularized via california hence we may find Australian surfers saying "gnarly" but not so much "totally tubular" and they certainly don't sport Polynesian tattoos and while waiting for a wave they don't sit there doing an upper body Hula dance. Surfing can become an olympic event without participants from countries with distant cultural ties to Polynesia and California participating in the bullshit cultural artefacts some surfing snob might do a PhD thesis on constituting "true" or "authentic" surfing.
Not so with breaking, and this is about the extent that I concur with a concept like "cultural appropriation" where we get Japanese and Korean's acting, pretty much solely in the context of the breaking contest like they are African Americans from the projects.
In this sense Surfing is like calisthenics, the group of bodyweight exercises originating from Greece that carries with it little-to-no-cultural artefacts, and breaking is like Pose based Yoga which is also a series of bodyweight exercises possibly originating in calisthenics but saddled with a bunch of cultural artefacts like mantras recited in a language most practitioners do not speak.
The second incompetence was that in both the men's and women's competitions 16 people competed and somehow Australia's female representative made the cut. Not simply making the cut on the Australian team, but got one of 16 places and managed to score 0 points. It should stretch credulity that Australia deserved representation in the women's comp.
For example, Ukraine and the US had two "b-girls" in the competition, Canada had none even though it produced the gold medallist b-boy. South and Central America was completely unrepresented as was Mexico. Morocco was the only African nation that got representation. An Afghan b-girl was disqualified from the competition on account of incorporating some kind of political message into her act. It seems to me that Japan's second best b-girl deserved that 16 spot that Australia obtained for some reason.
The third incompetence was the Australian Olympic Commission qualifying Raygun. Soberly looking at the judging that gave her 0 points, and assuming the judges at least competently discharged their duties, a good argument to be made is that sending Raygun was worse than sending nobody at all. Her performance stimulated all kinds of reactions, and that's largely what I'm referring to when I say that it's easy to say too much about it.
So there's a large chunk of the population who don't really understand sports at all, and their opinion for the most part, simply doesn't matter.
Beyond that, most people need only 10 seconds or less of exposure to the phenomena to basically understand the situation completely. Somebody got into the competition that shouldn't have, for some reason, and the point is moot because that's it for breakdancing at the Olympics for the foreseeable future.
I suspect though, for many her qualification are at odds with the experience of walking down a shopping mall in the summer time and seeing kids on the street do a better job of breakdancing than she managed.
I suspect for those contemporary in age to me or older, that's why Raygun's story did not take, and is unlikely to resemble that of Eric Moussambani's 100m freestyle qualifying swim in the 2000 Olympics. It was understood that Eric simply didn't have the opportunity to be a competitive swimmer, having never even seen a 50m Olympic size swimming pool prior to competing in the Olympics. Given the context, Eric became someone to cheer for in the spirit of participation. Furthermore the Olympic spirit is much more aligned with having Equatorial Guinea send someone to the Olympics to represent them on a world stage than it is a rich country with a bloated public spend on sports sending someone to the Olympics simply because we can.
Raygun as a selection from the AOC is from my limited understanding a direct result of the scarcity of women breakdancers in Australia, though it is possible that the core incompetence of the selection process was that Australia gave Raygun points for effort and creativity, that would not be awarded by the Olympic judges, meaning they ran the wrong contest to select a qualifier, that or Raygun made the rookie mistake of dinner party hosting where instead of cooking a straightforward recipe you are familiar with, you try to pull off something complicated on the big day.
If the AOC had money to burn on sending an athlete just to fill a roster spot, it seems they missed the trick on replicating the success of Alisa Camplin at the Winter Olympics, an ex-gymnast that Australia simply put on skiis to capitalize on complimentary skills. It feels plausible that the AOC could have gone to any of Australia's major ballet companies and found someone with the physical intelligence to be better than the best enthusiastic b-girl in Australia.
The final incompetence being that of Raygun herself. I feel it is fair to compare her somewhat to Eric Moussambani. Where there was a genuine question as to whether Eric the Eel could complete 100m freestyle, Raygun by her own testimony conceded that she simply couldn't do many of the dance moves on account of her physical conditioning.
In this regard she could be compared to the similarly self-aware Stephen Bradbury who famously won Australia's first ever Winter Olympic Gold Medal in the speed skating. Realizing he could not compete he consciously adopted a strategy that relied on the faster skaters crashing, and though out of his control the strategy paid off.
The problem for Raygun is that high speed collisions are just not a common occurrence in break dancing. Though I'm sure there's video of breakdancers doing the worm and falling off a stage, there's just nothing to suggest one could macarena or Nutbush their way to Olympic Gold by having competitors get too ambitious, especially in 1 v 1 "battles."
At which point I arrive at having more or less, nothing against Raygun. Her incompetence is the least of the problem, much like that monsters like Harvey Weinstein exist doesn't concern me anywhere near the extent that people facilitated his crimes because they could profit off of it and to my knowledge have paid no substantial penalty beyond dissolving the Weinstein company.
I have more issue with the AOC and IOC and frankly joe regular that has latched onto the spectacle.
It appears on balance of probability that Raygun was allowed up on that stage to give the world a demonstration of the at-this-point-overdetermined Dunning-Kruger effect.
There may be some, who likely not consciously are incredulous that the breaking community in Australia isn't so mean that they would simply boo and jeer a b-girl of Raygun's age out of the youth scene. I'm against that, I think if 40 yo, 60 yos or whoever want to step into the arena, they should be able to. I am pro-participation.
The issue lies at the point that someone determined that Raygun was the best Australia had to offer and sufficient to represent Australia on a world stage.
What tipped me over the edge into compulsively having to say too much about Raygun, was seeing someone post an opinion about how Raygun's performance was much worse because it was a privileged woman doing a minstrel routine because cultural appropriation.
Now, I don't really have an opinion on Al Jolson though I have watched a video of him performing "My Mammie" in blackface and I simply would say: I don't get it. I don't even know why Al Jolson was in blackface when you take the clip from "The Jazz Singer" as he is singing "My Mammie" to his Lithuanian (?) mother in the crowd.
Do I think Raygun's performance was a minstrel routine? No. I think if you are taking that much offense you are taking that much offense of your own free will.
She is almost certainly privileged by virtue of being Australian and having a PhD. In India has a general participation rate in tertiary education of 28.8% Mexico 21%, Australia it's something like 51%. If you are born Australian to non-abusive parents you are de facto privileged, especially when it comes to the Olympics, Australia sent 9 skateboarders to Paris, only Japan and the US sent more.
The most common first names among NBA players are "Michael" "Chris" "Kevin" "James" etc. and largely white-held stereotypes might assume the typical NBA story is a kid from the inner city hood playing hoops on the street to escape the drug game with their father Denzel Washington in Jail and their single mum cooking them spaghetti-o's in a project tower, but actually many NBA stars grow up middle class and are given bog-standard Hebrew (Biblical) first names go to good schools with good basketball programs and could have been a dentist if they weren't so tall with extremely large hands and thus having promising NBA careers especially given all the resources behind them.
Now was there any malice? No. Just dazzling incompetence. Beguiling incompetence. From what little footage I have seen, it is clear she was trying to be creative in an obvious way, suspending the assumption many in the humanities do - that the status quo is non-arbitrary. Basically I think she came up with "original" moves inspired by Australian Fauna, to compensate for her lack of athleticism. What she couldn't produce was something like the Frosby-Flop that instantly revolutionised the High-Jump event. Because she lacks athleticism.
Let's keep in mind, the Venice Beach scene from "Breakin" 1984 contained more creative choreography than the entire 2024 Olympic breaking competition, including a lot of creative stuff that is much worse than what has evolved to be the repertoire of competitive breakdances - namely power moves.
She came up with a passable routine for a children's show. Somebody with high body intelligence like a ballet dancer, with ample time to field-test new moves, could probably innovate breakdancing by taking inspiration from the motor functions of animals like snakes, kangaroos, even wombats and koalas. Kung Fu has a bunch of zoomorphic fighting styles that are at the least both aesthetically pleasing and athletic, if inferior to more straightforward fighting arts like boxing. brazilian jiu-jitsu, and okinawan karate.
A better case could be made for malicious cultural appropriation by a privileged white woman, had she tried to incorporate indigenous dance steps by studying Aboriginal dance companies. Not necessarily a solid case however. Nor produce a winning strategy, as this would be like an Argentinian b-boy or b-girl trying to incorporate the Tango into a break routine. Like there's an avenue for innovation, but it's breakdancing as distinct from other styles of dance. Had she the athleticism and coordination to pull it off, she could have contended for a medal by using more conventional power moves.
This is the point at which cultural appropriation fails to garner my sympathies, because it just comes across as anti-competitive (in the same sense as Gilbert Arenas suggesting the NBA needs to kick out all the European players, an unveiled parochialism) and generally requires some kind of double standard (like Gilbert Arenas feeling his culture is entitled to appropriate basketball just because with very few exceptions black Americans have lifted the profile of the game, or in the teaching materials for the Candyman reboot, "reclaiming" Candyman for black culture when it is adapted from British Author Clive Barker's short story "The Forbidden" set on an English estate), which just cannot arrive at anti-discrimination. I feel I somewhat understand the power dynamic argument that generally founds left-wing discrimination, it's just what can someone like Rachael Gunn do? She is being asked not to participate in case she wins.
There's nothing this argument has to say about Raygun that also cannot be said of winner Ami Yuasa, Dominika Banavic, Liu Qingyi - the medallist b-girls. Without cultural appropriation breaking just isn't a sport at all. If the distinction is that a "privileged" woman made a mockery of the culture by being bad at it, then we must allow that Eminem and Elvis never be cited as cultural appropriators on account of them being good at what they do. (unless in their cases their unprivileged upbringings makes them appropriators because they are good at what they do?)
The institution won out by giving Raygun 0 points. The culture loses because she is the most talked about 2024 Olympian probably, unless incidentally like some NBA star is being more discussed because he signed a trade deal and happened to be an Olympian.
If I were to rank the 2024 Olympic memes on merit they would be as follows:
1. Photo of Gabriel Medina exiting wave on way to Gold in Surfing.
But in terms of google trends, that ranking is reversed.
Now Rachael Gunn herself has to my understanding basically spun the reaction to her dance entry as what I shall call a "Hannah Gadsby" which is to say, she is leaning into the spectacle as apology for the lack of substance. And I know people regard Nanette as quite substantive, but in time I think it is recognized widely that as a comedy special it sucks on account of pre-subversion-jokes not being very funny, as a marketing package for an extended TED talk it rules.
What else has Raygun achieved though beyond a whole bunch of attention?
Well, Yusef Dikec resonated because he performed while cutting through a lot of his sport's artifice. There's a positive message about backing yourself and not getting intimidated or sucked into the expensive signalling of richer nations and richer competitors. The meme is a watered down version of Abebe Bikala's story winning the 1960 Rome games' marathon barefoot - these are archetypal underdog stories of the Olympics in terms of rich national sports programs losing to poor national sports programs, and not because Abebe couldn't afford shoes nor that Yusef can't afford glasses and hearing protection, they both prefer(red) not to use them.
The photo of Gabriel Medina captures a moment that almost deifies Gabriel. He is suspended triumphant in mid air, his surfboard almost parallel. It speaks of complete dominion over his environment, I wouldn't be surprised if it gets turned into a statue somewhere. Like Michael Jordan's Airwalk or Vince Carter's dunk of death or Usain Bolt's Beijing 100m win, it is capturing a moment that seemingly expands the frontier of human possibility. Little kids will look at that photo and believe that a human being can fly.
I have to be careful how I word this next bit in particular, because I don't want to falsely attribute intent. When we take this combination of memes with a god-like surfer, an ice cold shooter and an incompetent dancer that eclipses not only the other memes, but pretty much all accomplishment - little girls are blameless for inferring from the memes that in the domain of sports men are gods and cool dudes and women are jokes.
I'm not saying it is the case, I am alluding to the packaging of ideas. The best we can say is that it is a triumph of the attention economy, a confluence of incompetence allowing this spectacle to transpire obliterates what inferences can be drawn from Simone Biles' gymnastic golds, Saya Sakakibara's bmx racing gold, Arisha Trew's skateboarding gold, Jessica and Naomi Fox's canoeing golds...even Kathryn Mitchell's ability to compete in javelin at 42 years of age.
The misogyny is out and in full, because there is probably no easier dog to kick in western society than a middle-aged white woman. Raygun is a Karen even though she made no complaints to a manager and instead tried to have fun with break dancing. Teaching us that Karen's are not even about what Karen's do but what they are. People are reacting as if some human garbage living in some modest comfort of an academic-in-a-humanities department is an affront to the Just World Hypothesis.
Ami Yuasa the gold medalist b-girl is 25 and Japanese. Aside from that she is a university graduate majoring in English and American Literature. So we are definitely saying too much about breaking at the Olympics if I need to discuss Japanese history and Japanese culture to render arguments of "cultural appropriation" unintelligible. Sadly "do I need to explain Japan to you?" is not a rhetorical question when directed to the modern left, given the extent to which in my experience left wingers fetishize Japan despite it basically being an ethno-nationalist state highly gender-polarized and almost completely dissonant with it's history of imperialism.
All of which is as irrelevant to Ami Yuasa's performance as the history and culture and economy of Australia is irrelevant to Rachael Gunn's. Complaints of the nature of white-privilege, cultural appropriation etc. are likely a good case study to shelve for when we can pick over the corpse of "Anti-racism" as functioning as a literal reverse racism.
If you read the abstract of Rachael Gunn's academic papers, you will see someone who is completely schooled in intersectional feminism and is trying to fight white-male patriarchal neoliberalism. This is the predictable result, because most of these critiques (either by mode or by composition) are horseshit. I'm not going to invest in reading Raygun's doctoral paper, but if she doesn't use an empirical or historical methodology to determine that lack of female representation in break dancing stems as a bi-product from the overall crappiness of the Australian hip-hop (aka skip-hop) scene then that paper is a horseshit PhD.
Hannah Gadsby took something "unserious" being a comedy special and successfully subverted it by making it serious to the point of harrowing for many. Gadsby probably leveraged millions of dollaridoos if not hundreds of thousands and I think in the fullness of time my money is on the major contribution of Nanette being archival evidence of how little was understood about male violence in the early 21st century, again thanks to pinning it on a nebulous skunked/Motte-and-Bailey term like "patriarchy" basically guaranteeing that the content cannot be understood.
There's no need to analyse, or wait for the fullness of time with Raygun's performance. We already have movies like "The Room" and reality TV competitions like "Idol", "X Factor", "Got Talent", and "So You Think You Can Dance" for which everything is in the title to know exactly what transpired. I think Raygun could leverage this moment into possibly thousands of dollars as a guest speaker at a few events. In the meantime she is likely being psychologically destroyed by the impact of her high-risk strategy, and that middle aged white women are seen as fair game, even more so than straight white men. The inherent risk of asking: "Where the #b-girls at? politics of (in)visibility in breaking culture" assuming the question to be rhetorical.
Rachel Dracht spoofing Raygun on lightning-rod-of-desperate-need-to-be-culturally-relevant Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is just a poor man's version of Tina Fey quoting middle-aged-white-woman Sarah Palin word for word on SNL. Performances that are pure pandering and will likely age less sympathetically than their inspirations (though it is hard to be sympathetic to Palin, very much forerunner to Trump, she is a symptom of the Republican Party base, a point on the evolutionary trajectory of dumb presidents from Raegan to Bush Jr. to Palin to Trump and as NNT pointed out, if you want to scare yourself extrapolate that pattern into the future.)
Furthermore to the specific delusion, someone who mistakes "originality" as an unqualified good is not new. It is a common artistic delusion. It is the reason Melbourne population 5 million, can somewhat viably support 150,000 seats for 9 professional Australian Rules football clubs 705k memberships and about 3ish truly dedicated Jazz venues. (I wouldn't be surprised if breakdancing is a bigger scene in Melbourne than Jazz is despite having a fraction of the economic support).
Contemporary Jazz is unpopular because it equates being original with being good. It is dwarfed both in number of performers and crowd turnout by solo female singer songwriters with acoustic guitars. On this front, I have long had a gripe that Jazz snobs think they are taking risks, where I feel risk is a measure of variability of outcome. Modern Jazz is not risky, it is almost guaranteed to alienate audiences and bankrupt its practitioners unless they can sit atop a pyramid of tutelage teaching the next generation of unpopular musicians their difficult artform. It does not resemble Coltrane or Miles Davis' highly listenable jazz, because it isn't allowed to, because originality.
The breaking routine clearly was risky, because it has had this outsize response. The thing that deserves the most outrage would be the degree to which we are all a sucker for spectacle, schadenfreude and outrage itself.
So at base, what we have is grist for a very problematic mill.
What do we want out of the IOC the AOC out of Raygun and PhD's? Does the public "discourse" bring us any closer? Does it even approach answering the question "how did this happen?" No, the attention economy is terrible at answering questions and solving problems.
I for one, want the IOC to take risks, to try new sports and retire old sports. There are a bunch of difficult questions in sports, not the least of which is the centrality of defining gender to sports. But like, if you contemplate just the question of prize money for winning a gold medal, does a gold medalist water polo team member deserve the same compensation as the 100m sprint winner or marathon winner?
Things are changing constantly and are unpredictable. In permitting the IOC to take risks, they need to have the competence in researching to ensure they are actually taking risks. I believe breaking was introduced to try and draw in a younger crowd, presumably than say, equestrian events do. I believe if they did their research they may have discovered that break dancing is not that popular with young people.
The AOC needs to reign in its olympic qualifying standards, such that just because somebody is the best regional representative in a sport wouldn't automatically qualify them, as they do with the current Winter Olympic events, otherwise it represents a potential transfer in wealth from Australian Taxpayers to private citizens via the moral hazard of creating spectacle, intentionally or not. The medalling b-girls and b-boys have a common met criteria of competing in world championships or continental championships and medalling. Someone from Sydney (pop. 5.3 million) beating someone from New Zealand (pop 5.12 million) is not good enough.
Furthermore, for new sports or exhibition sports the IOC should do its utmost to avoid a "pay-to-play" scenario, as would be true of say the IOC putting Gridiron in the Olympics that would not be true of them putting Cricket or Baseball in the Olympics. Cricket obviously has a world cup, the case for it being a truly global game is likely inferior only to Football (Soccer), baseball there are pro-leagues in Japan, the US and Latin America. Gridiron, not only are there almost no compatible international leagues (I think Canadian football is possibly a thing?) but there is also a dearth of non US players in the NFL, with only a few Australians that generally specialize as kickers playing for the big money.
If the IOC permits NFL to be an Olympic sport we will see G7 nations putting together bullshit teams and granting bullshit citizenship to US pros in a scramble for a silver medal, but we won't see Equatorial Guinea able to send a Grid Iron team to the olympics because it is a ridiculous amount of people and equipment to put up in an olympic village in Los Angeles at taxpayer expense.
Anyway, what about the impacts on Raygun's doctoral thesis? I believe a PhD isn't revokable even when debunked, even when the doctrate of philosophy debunks her own thesis herself. Raygun is by far and away the most famous Australian break dancer of all time. She is likely currently the most famous break dancer in the world, and she did so with no particular noteworthy ability in the sport. She scored zero points and won something like 5 percentage categories in her bouts out of 270.
She has unintentionally replicated the grievance studies affair's attempted thesis that the social sciences have no sound epistemology, that they can arrive at any a-priori conclusions in this case a lack of representation and achievement by women in breaking is a product of white-patriarchy and neoliberalism, rather than a broader correlation with a lack of interest in the dance style and the low social status in Australia of break dancers. (Raygun aside from being the most famous Australian break dancer, is also the only woman I have ever known to date a male break dancer.)
Thomas Sowell could cut and paste his critiques of critical social theories onto Rachael's thesis - by broadening the scope we can observe that breakdancing is dominated by Asia and Europe. It is popular with affluent Japanese, Chinese and Korean people. Had Rachael not nested her thesis in Sydney and Australia, she may have identified that the (in)visibility of women in the sport had little if nothing to do with patriarchy, whiteness and neoliberalism.
Much as the IOC needs to get better at its own research, the research conducted in social sciences needs to be less insulated from reality, so that our academics don't initially test their theories only when it gets real on a stage in front of the world.
I want to say from the beginning, I don't know what J.R.R. Tolkien's position was on the races of his middle earth being analogous to races of actual earth. I'm going to allow for arguments sake, with no interest as to the truth of the matter, that Tolkien was the most cartoonish Victorian Era colonial racist Hitler curious stereotype of racism, rather than some old pipe smoking Oxbridge dude more akin to a Bertrand Russell or whatever.
Allowing that, which could be pure fiction, again I cannot state enough how much I don't care, and therein is a spoiler for my thesis and conclusion, lets say that Orcs were created by cartoon racist Tolkien as his veiled opinion of Africa. Definitely not Asians, definitely not Phoenicians, Jews or Arabs, Africans.
Okay, now we can move on to premises we do not need to allow for the sake of argument, its shit that actually happened. A bunch of nerds unwittingly pick up LOTR and are like "Wooooahhhh woooah woah!" they are blown away by it. They can't get enough, they become fanatics or "fans" for short and start generating their own derivative content.
Some of them will produce substantial derivative work where they inject their own modicum of originality. Others will produce thinly veiled derivative works where they are forced to be original because they want to go commercial without being sued by Tolkien.
Somewhere in this process of creative history, "Warhammer Fantasy Battle" falls out and "Dungeons and Dragons" (DnD) and by this stage, nobody can copyright an Orc/Ork/Orruk, they have become too generic to be enforceable.
LOTR itself, unquestionably is a derivative work, drawing on Norse mythology probably Celtic mythology it was a project of myth making. Hence we can get species like Dwarves who live (somehow) underground, much like goblins and from the Hobbit and LOTR a lot of these role-playing-games that formalised many of the fantasy tropes involve going into a dungeon and fighting some shit.
It used to be very fairy-tale black-and-white (and charge that racially as you will) Reagan era good vs evil. So you get like first edition of fantasy role playing games and it's basically each one of you gets an analogue to a fellowship member, or you are general of an analogue to the Battle of Five Armies, and have at it.
Somewhere later in the process, people start deconstructing, in essence, the ethics of killing intelligent life.
Like there was a period in history, maybe the British Raj that was pre-Tolkien (not that people weren't superstitious) but there were adventure clubs and English men with big moustaches did bullshit like hunt tigers. Now, if I was in my supermarket and a Tiger escaped from the zoo and got into the supermarket - it would probably head for the meat section or the Deli and I could probably just leave the supermarket in a calm and orderly fashion.
But say the Tiger was hunting me, I would probably have little compunction about running to the kitchen ware aisle and trying to rip a kitchen knife or two out of their blister pack and enter a kill-or-be-killed mindset.
I think in early additions of DnD, Orcs were just regarded in this sense as the moral equivalent of Tigers - they are dangerous and it is kill or be killed and that is the adventure.
There probably is a game about hunting Tigers in India or Siberia or whatever, but it isn't really part of the fantasy roleplaying genealogy.
Orcs, Ogres, Trolls, Giants, Vampires, Revenants, Harpies etc. whatever. I'm sure entered these games and genres as the moral equivalent of Sharks, Tigers and Polar Bears but they are a little more exciting because clearly they can hold clubs and axes and swords, but they were kitsch in the sense of stimulating an emotional response of excitement, and about as thoughtful as a shark with a laser gun.
Like, I did not experience growing up in the fighting fantasy books, board games like Hero Quest and Talisman that Orc society, or Dwarven society had had any more thought as to how their economies functioned and how they come to have swords and shields and chainmail as how a shark might wind up with a laser.
Which is all to say, from the perspective of fans playing DnD or Warhammer they were savage brutes that were going to kill you unless you killed them first.
What happened later, and I cannot stress how little I care about when. Was that people got exhausted of the nerdy tropes without getting exhausted by DnD, and the quite natural process of deconstruction came in. At some point, and likely as a product of convergent evolution, a bunch of people got captivated by the idea of playing DnD or whatever from the Orcs perspective.
So we just have this natural transition from a very one dimensional baddy to a complex character.
From there, someone deconstructs the trope and deconstruction very quickly moves into problematizing.
Now I already allowed that Tolkien for arguments sake could have been a racist and been being racist when he made the orcs the baddies. It doesn't matter and why I don't care is because of the genetic fallacy where I don't think Tolkien ever described Orcs as being green, and now orcs are green and in many of their incarnations they aren't "corrupted elves" or whatever Tolkiens origin story is I CANNOT STRESS ENOUGH I DO NOT CARE ENOUGH TO CHECK OR BE RIGHT OR WRONG ABOUT TOLKIEN.
In so far at this point in the 21st century Orcs are problematic because they are "coded" as African and maybe a specific culture of Africa or maybe African American because somewhere Tolkien expressed negative views on jazz music or something, I think the problem can be summarized as Orcs aren't Nazis.
Bringing me to the differences between Raiders of the Lost Ark, Inglorious Bastaards and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a Jewish revenge movie for the Holocaust. It leans into the pulp fiction genre, and the Nazis are unambiguously evil trying to get hold of a powerful supernatural artefact and through Hubris the Nazi occultist gets himself and his whole battallion or whatever killed. It's fine because Harrison Ford and love interest know to close their eyes when the Ark is opened. I think Indy even has his hands literally tied.
Inglorious Bastaards involves a Jewish girl seizing the opportunity to kill Nazi leadership and end WW2. The opening scene establishes that the Nazis killed her family, and the final slaughter is of the Nazi leadership the Nazis most responsible. Ahistorical and counterfactual as the movie may be when compared to something like Downfall, neither Raiders nor Inglorious Bastaards have moral ambiguity.
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare on the other hand, didn't quite work. In The Great War or "World War 1" I would hope that it is easy to imagine that the German soldiers in the trenches are more or less the moral equivalent of British, French and Anzac soldiers also fighting in the trenches. Which side you fought for was not so much a question of ideology as an accident of birth.
Once you get to WW2, I'll admit it becomes harder, but I think the world is on the cusp of being ready to have killing Nazi rank-and-file soldiers problematized. Because we would have two categories we can never tell being in effect when we watch some allied black-ops group gun down a heap of Nazis.
On the one hand, we have people who are fighting in WW2 because they were simply born Protestant or Catholic German, like probably their parents or grandparents that fought in WW1 you just fought for your country, because there was no EU you couldn't freely move and become a constitutional monarchist in England, a Communist in Spain or a Neutral Swede. You couldn't download duolingo and pick up a foreign language if you were working class German.
Then allowing that there's a large contingent of rank and file soldiers in Germany that were ideological. They stood up and saluted the Furer when some kid sang "tomorrow belongs to me" at the beer garden or beer halls. These are people that much like the Allies didn't have access to good information. They just had local papers, if they read them at all.
To use an Australian analogy, they were likely the moral equivalents of Australian communities whose beliefs align with the Coal Industry in their town. They think climate change is a hoax, the Great Barrier Reef is thriving and Adani is a wonderful company with an impeccable record. Likely the economic devastation followed by the economic opportunities of the build up to war, mostly informed many German soldiers opinions.
So how much am I supposed to relish them being hosed down by bullets from silenced machine guns. I can certainly see how it was necessary in the context of war, but I can't get any gratification from the fact that most of these people are just born in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Now, I can't think of a good segue from Nazis to Harleen Quinzel aka Harley Quinn. Batman villain's henchman created based on a dream sequence in a soap opera witnessed by Bruce Tim put into an animated series and then introduced into the comics and exploded in popularity by Margot Robbie's portrayal in piece of shit movie "Suicide Squad."
Harley Quinn became popular. Little girls wanted to dress up as her for Halloween, it captured a lot of women's imaginations. Harley Quinn is an interesting character, because she is fundamentally a train wreck in an unhealthy and abusive relationship with the Joker, and a tragic figure.
So naturally, cannonically because Harley Quinn is popular with women, she must become a good role model, a good guy. So now canonnically I believe it to be the case that Harley has split with the Joker and joined the Bat family to fight against crime and for law and order and justice and whatever. She was replaced by "Punch Line" as Joker's "business partner" rather than useful idiot abused lover, who engages with the Joker on her own terms with her own agency.
Then there's the feature "Harley Quinn: Breaking Glass" where a highschool student Harley joins a Queer theatre troop and befriends a Woke Ivy as she learns that Joker is just a privileged white male or some shit. Condensing Harley Quinn's whole journey into a single narrative arc, while we can learn some cutting edge politics along the way.
However you feel about it, however entertained or not you have been by Harley Quinn's comic book and movie appearances she's a crystal clear example of an over investment in media effects. Put simply "Girls can't have bad things." They have to have nice things.
Now Harley Quinn as a character required no cognitive effort, no mental expenditure, no video essay to problematize. She was a psychologically and emotionally unstable woman in an abusive relationship with the Joker. She required redeeming just as soon as she became a popular Halloween costume with women who do not at large read comics. I'm aware women do read and write and review comics, but I'm guesstimating that 90% of the women that cosplayed as Harley Quinn know her from Margot Robbie's initial portrayal, punching Harley Quinn cosplay into google image search shows me at least that the Margot Robbie costume is overrepresented compared to Harley's traditional harlequin outfit that she wore in most mediums. (Curiously, Harley's outfits from "Birds of Prey" "Breaking Glass" and James Gunn's "Suicide Squad" are unrepresented, which makes sense given that she was desexualised/de-objectified post popularity, because young women cannot be trusted with media.)
Segueing back to Orcs/Orks whatever, when I think DnD what comes to mind? Well it depends when we are talking about. Like "Stranger Things" I feel captures DnD in the 80s and the Satanic Panic and shit. I think of a hobby largely for unathletic pasty white guys and their middle class college bound black friends who do not range but fall either side of gangly and fat wearing Chuck Taylor's and Levi 501s and black t-shirts, before hitting the 90s and then it's fat white guys in college dorms with white-afros and neckbeards in cargo shorts and butthole surfer tees drinking mountain dew and eating doritos and then the Spice Girls end the 90s and begin the 2000s in 1997 and there's boy band and Britney Mania and shit and that lasts into the early-to-mid-2010s and then much as the French preserved rollerblading and breakdancing while the west forgot about it DnD experiences a resurgence in recent years but I basically equate it with the LGBTQIA+ scene now.
We can cut out the middle part and take the strong problematic argument that Orcs are coded as black people.
If we go back to the 70s 80s scene when it appeared to be an activity dominated by white men like almost all "Nerd" "Culture" I feel safe in retrodicting that none of those players picked up that Orcs were coded as African Savages. That none of the people exploring the fantasy of being a knight, a cleric, a mage, a thief, a bard had Colonial fantasies driven by the "Scramble for Africa" nor the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
I can also confidently retrodict without bothering to check old DnD materials that I won't find such campaigns in there. The historically "problematic" read on Orcs I feel likely to also confirm the scholarly consensus that media effects are weak. It is akin to "the satanic panic"
Like we just know enough with what 40 years of hindsight that video games, role playing games, movies and books do not produce Nazis and White Supremacists, nor Satanists.
Flashing forward to present day, where DnD is uses storytelling tech to explore race and gender by a generation for which this shit is their jam. It is more likely that DnD's content is far more likely to change based on who is playing it than the reverse effect.
Bringing me to one of the finest examples of non-journalism I've ever come across. The below video, I am going to say, if you can't guess what the finding of the investigation will be before you've heard the end of the question posed, I'll suspect you of having a debilitating cognitive deficit:
All I learned from that video when I watched it two or three years ago was that "Sensitivity reader" was a job, that based on the thesis of this post, shouldn't exist because media effects are weak.
I think this is the current DnD scene, I don't know what the future holds for DnD maybe it will regress to a hobby seen as mostly for straight white male neckbeards who want to explore the fantasy of living in a heteronormative media culture, but for now DnD appears to an outsider such as myself as far-left egalitarian, all inclusive. Dungeons, dungeons are wheelchair accessible.
What we see more of is a tool - the group conversation based Role Playing Game (RPG) being adopted, appropriated and assimilated by another culture. I'm sure someone who has read continental philosophy and its offsprings, or has atleast absorbed some of it's darwinian memes can explain why there's no doublestandard, but describing DnD as having an indigenous ingroup of white male nerds, that have found themselves on the receiving end of the collonial experience of being discovered, invaded and marginalized is at the very least descriptive.
I don't care, because in this case, while a demographic finds itself maybe losing esteem within the culture (and many adopting or aspiring to the invasive culture) they aren't in anyway dispossessed. Nothing is stopping them from keeping their group all straight white males and playing earlier editions for the sheer simplicity of good vs evil.
I make the point because I find it to generally be the case to explain any and all phenomena as a reiteration of something people have always done. I'm wary of New Era stories.
The real Irony I would point to, is that if there was ever a time to not be concerned that playing DnD would lead to ethnocentric views, in turn leading to ethnonationalism and racial discrimination it is now.
What could be justified is that more racially enlightened generations are coming into the fantasy genre and finding "racial errors" that they are now correcting, basically being that everyone is qualified to be a sensitivity reader.
However, they are correcting something that likely, never had an effect. Reshaping fantasy media to be problem free, when the risk that people mistake fantasy for reality is almost historically indeterminate.
Bringing us to the all important question of intent, which I would specifically word as "Who's doing it to you?" again allowing that Tolkein was a foaming at the mouth racist (which I haven't bothered to substantiate) I don't think the creators of DnD appropriated Orcs for it's 1e bestiary with any conscious knowledge of such, forethought or malicious intent. If they did, by the time you get to Blizzard Entertainment's "Warcraft" I cannot read Orcs as being coded as anything but the fantasy trope of Orcs.
What I overwhelmingly see, from LOTR to DnD to World of Warcraft, is a narrative device to supply enemies to fight so there is action in a roleplaying game. Sure, there could be, and almost certainly must be historical inspiration and likely candidates would be the Mongol Empire, the Persian Empire and the Moors, all the "outsider" cultures that ever seriously threatened or invaded Europe. One can read Dostoevsky's War and Peace (as I just did) and even see a Russian using Napoleonic France as the basis for a foreign invader.
"Who's doing it to you?" is a crucial question where you create offense where non was intended. Watching Youtube channel "Sit down and Shut up" response to a viewer request on how to get into RPG's host Quinn at one point suggests that characterisation of NPCs should be on the level of pro-wrestling. That is to say, and I'm paraphrasing that your players will enjoy interacting with one-dimensional characters a lot more than interacting with a host of nuanced, dynamic fully realised characters.
I'm sure in many ways, Orcs simply evolved to be best fit to the RPG ecosystem. Again, I'll for the sake of argument grant that they were based in all instances on negative racist stereotypes of tribal cannibalistic savages. I don't think you have a good argument though, even granting this. I suspect those stereotypes existed in the first place to provide the same utility: because people wanted to live in a world where everything was simple and you could embrace the spirit of adventure to cross the Atlantic, invade Mexico, trek to the North Pole, Club Seals, render whale fat etc.
It's really harmful to apply these narratives to reality, where race is a construct. Fantasy is the domain from which these narratives came and to where they belong.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga was an excellent film that featured a huge army of motorcycle nomads lead by dementus.
George Miller is on record somewhere, as using them as an analogy for the Huns, steppes people lead by Attila.
When I watched that movie, I repeatedly got annoyed by the number of motorcycle nomads and the complete lack of supply trains. Like that gang just could not exist without starving to death in a matter of days.
I don't think Miller and his co-writers ever sat down to crunch the numbers on how many calories are needed to sustain the populations of the wasteland. The thing was, even though I couldn't help noticing it, I could just as easily let it go, realizing it was not the point. The point was the story being told.
Maybe the fantasy genre is overrepresented with power fantasies but I do not think fantasy is positively correlated with people attaining power in reality. Unless it correlates to periods of history when tertiary qualifications reliably predicted top quintile household incomes. In which case DnD would correlate to holding power and status in society in the same way that a decrease in Piracy leads to an increase in climate change.
Harley Quinn is in many ways a more interesting problematised fantasy than Orcs. This is because, really there's only been one case of a male identifying with the Joker and then killing a bunch of people as The Joker is want to do (that douchebag dipshit that shot a bunch of people at a premier of "The Dark Knight Rises") but women get involved with abusive men all the time. I think in Australia they are talking about a woman being killed by her domestic partner once every 4 or 8 days at the moment.
I think a statistical analysis would likely show that over the lifetime of the character Harley Quinn, the character has had no discernible effect on violence against women. By which I mean I'd bet that if anything since the early-mid-90s when Harley Quinn debuted in Batman: The Animated Series, to now, it's likely that in countries like the US, Canada, Australia and Western Europe if anything I'd predict the world has become marginally safer.
I would make that prediction because (austerity budgets aside) I think the support infrastructure has likely improved to enable more women to escape dangerous relationships.
I imagine we aren't much closer to solving the riddle of women who mistake danger for safety and safety for danger, who are (like men) susceptible to love bombing, mirroring and being rushed to commit. Just unlike men, women are much much more vulnerable to being beaten to death.
And I would emphasise that I am not saying that a bunch of women are inherently defective when it comes to mate selection. I know too many cases where people have had healthy relationships, then been targeted by abusers. Abusers target and recruit their victims. Abuse is a wicked problem with no clear solution.
Harley Quinn is more likely symptom than cause. Arguably her rehabilitation is likely a symptom of writers who have experienced or studied rehabilitation from abuse writing that into her character.
But, after rehabilitation, a girl walks into a comic book store and picks up a comic and is presented with a less diverse cast of female characters. Furthermore, I can problematize Punch Line Harley's replacement villain right now, Punch Line's ability to set boundaries with Joker is an implicit victim blaming of Harley suggesting that Harley was simply too stupid or otherwise flawed to handle Joker. A dangerous message all round.
I'll just say I think Punch Line sucks, and thankfully the Lindy effect predicts she will cease to exist before Harley does. Just as Orcs will outlast them both.
When it comes to interpreting media with a critical eye, things are as problematic as you make them. Video games don't kill people, handguns kill people.
I don't know if it's what I heard or about what I would have guessed but yeah the attacks on the Pentagon, World Trade Center Twin Towers etc. cost half a mil.
To put it in perspective, the September 11 plot cost less than 0.25% of one of the hijacked planes. (though I cbf'ed adjusting for 23 years of inflation.)
Now in terms of the budgetary costs, the post 9-11 wars "on terror" is estimated around $8 trillion USD.
So what I see when I look at this, as an incredibly fragile structure, and the cost-benefits is going to get very complex, like military-industrial-complex. I think it is reasonably beyond a civilian like me to comprehend the counterfactuals.
To me in all the years that have passed I've never really heard an argument that justifies the war in Iraq that would not also oblige the US to also prosecute a war against North Korea.
I'm getting side tracked, because in recent weeks something interesting happened in that some kid almost shot the presumptive Republican Presidential candidate with an AR-15.
There was a lot of reflexive talk and news coverage, because it is interesting, but this was more in line of 24 hour News Channel anchors interacting with pundits to speculate on what happened, what could have happened, what will happen etc.
Both more interesting and more disconcerting is that we still live in more or less the same world that managed to kill Frans Ferdinand. An event you can see dramatized in the historical fiction spy movie "The King's Man".
Except, 20 million people likely wouldn't get dragged into trench warfare over a bunch of anachronistic treaties a bunch of different nation states have in place to declare war with each other should some figure get popped.
I think many of my well-meaning left-leaning friends maybe don't appreciate how bad the chaos could have been had Trump's head popped like a melon. There's a great temptation on the left to think Trump is causing partisan insanity rather than being a symptom of it, at best a foci.
And predictably it is a failure of the Secret Service, there job is to protect candidates so that one person gets one vote, not one person gets the only vote.
But let's look at the cost of the assassination attempt. Obviously it cost the shooter his life, so right there like the 9-11 attacks you probably rule out 99% of the worlds population through cost alone. Most people aren't willing to give their lives up. Sure there's a bunch of soldiers and cops and stuff, but the recruiting videos for those professions aren't "You will definitely die!"
Beyond that, like, the plot must have cost between $200~$300 USD. Okay, turns out I was wildly wrong, I blame media stereotypes. We are talking an AR-15 rifle retailing between $800-$1200 USD. Then a ladder which might be a couple of hundred bucks, it sounds like camo gear was just everyday wear for the shooter, and then the gas to drive from home to the rally.
I'm going to indulge in expressing my ire at something that really annoys me, and that is when Trump boosters refer to his surviving the assassination attempt as "miraculous" because it isn't. Anyone interpreting the outcome as divine intervention needs to just go down to a shooting range and try and recreate the shot on a paper target. I think you would find the probability of missing, quite high.
Which again lends credence to the idea that a disturbed youth of no particular ideological bent executed a dumb plan that went badly (an innocent person was killed) and could have been disastrous.
Even with Andrew Jackson's failed assassination which required not one but two pistols to misfire at close range is not miraculous, given it predates the quality revolution in manufacturing by like 150 years.
We just live with a basic asymmetry where it takes a second to wreck stuff and time to build. Maybe it's terrifying to contemplate that there's no amount of money that can be spent to guard against the forces of entropy but this thought should be most terrifying to the tyrants of the world.
I feel, quite strongly, that the main thing that prevents us being victimised by crime, is that most people aren't criminals. I mean most people have probably pirated some IP illegally at some point in this internet age, but the fear of believers that without God anything is permitted is ill-founded.
That fact of reality is that everything is permitted in so far as if you are physically capable, you can do it. Society does the bulk of the negative reinforcement, for example a government agency sniper will shoot you dead if you open fire on a campaign rally.
Before that though, there's just the sheer fact that much as you might fantasize about doing violent things to people causing you anxiety and angst and disappointing you in the human race, almost nobody does it and that's actually a good thing.
The secret service will no doubt have to tighten things up, I'm sure there's some degree of contagion, like the US's tragic history of school shooting where Columbine was but the first high profile school shooting.
To some degree, putting up millions of dollars to fix a thousand dollar problem is the problem. But not necessarily so, the situation might be like the movie "The Martian" where the expense was justified by the significance of the human frontier, or it could be like the movie "se7en" where there's just no amount that you can shoot Kevin Spacey that is going to undo the damage he did.
In the next pandemic, I'd be more pleased to here the Victorian government in Australia paid Quarantine security $2,000 an hour than that they got the army in to do it.
This is the main takeaway for those who want to live in an ordered and structured society. When half-a-million dollars can force you to spend 8 trillion, it makes sense to just create $200m a year in government jobs to track the terrorists. When a breach in quarantine costs a state billions in lockdown economic losses, it makes sense to pay hotel security 10x their hourly wage.
It probably would behoove the Trump campaign to stage his rallies in Stadiums and other venues with security, than keep skimping on cheap outdoor venues and passing the cost onto taxpayers to basically have infinite secret service protection.
Por mas que uno ano yo quiero desafiarme a mà mismo de escribir una posto de blog en Espanol. Por siempres soy interesante en traslativo mi persona, autoexpresión.
Elige un grande carnoso tópico tambien, y desafortunadamente soy es un desagradable gente entonces es puede a lei, no solo porque de mi Espanol, pero porque es negativo.
En breve, GDL, Jalisco y Mexico es el hogar de alguna magnifico indigenista organizaciones que es mal administrativo.
Los subjecto es importante por mi, porque incluso como un forastro, cuando nosotros hables de indigenista nosotros hables a herencia mundial. Tambien me importa a los gentes que es en esta escena, que con frecuencia sufrir voluntariamente los mala administrativo que percibo.
Todo mi escrivá es es solo mi percepción, pero es de un forasteros que casi accidentalmente descubrira los grupos (como Columbus y conquistadores descubrir…) entonces siento esta percepcion es valioso. Gentes que gravitar mas naturalmente a los esta grupos, puede compartir el disposicion mismo hay los gentes quien mala administrativo los organizaciones como estas, y entonces, haria exactamente los mismas cosas. Es es por que escribo.
No lo se si aplica ignorancia pluralista o espiral de silencio o los dos o otra cosa, pero es segura para mi porque aqui estas en Australia con aislamiento máximo ahora.
Una communidad se reune,su deshacerse de las preocupaciones mezquinas y triviales de su vida diaria y recordar juntos su profundo yos. Se reunen, intercambio saludos y expresan sus esperanzas y deseos para la ceremonia. Los ancianos los conducen a la ofrenda donde se entregan a traves del canto y la adoración. Las puras son llevados al frente para rendir homenaje a la ofrende antes de que sea humildemente retirada de su lugar y llevada el centro del circulo.
Durante los siguientes dÃas se lleva a cabo el rito, el circulo queda aislado, rodeado de talismanes sagrados mientras los bailarines representan las antiguas formas de purificarlo. Los ancianos dirigen el danza, centrando a la comunidad en su lugar en el cosmos. Cuando comienzan los bailar, levantan los brazos hacia los grandes espiritus que dieron vida a toda la creación.
Esta ritual es para el Sol, y el rito llama Su atención, observado si la gente recuerda los costumbres antiguas, si sus es verdad en el devoción y humilidad, si son fieles en su devocion y humildad, si haran suficiente ofrenda. Las aguilas observan a sus enviados, dando vueltas en circulos arriba mientras los bailarines giran dentra del cÃrculo sagrada abaja.
Si hubiera algún tipo de tinte que se adhiriera a la energÃa, la fuerza vital que impregna todos los cosas, si fuera vertida desde el cielo en el circulo sagrada, podriamos observar el rito e simple vista. Mientras los ancianos guÃan los bailarines purifica el espacio sagrado, lo limpian a el y a ellos mismos de energia destructiva, negativa y alienante; No dejando nada en el transcurso del rito más que energÃa positiva, creativa y conectiva.
Ninguna persona permanece impasible de emocions. Los bailarines se transforman por la visión y la perspectiva que han obtenido. No pueden imaginar lo que los ancianos deben saber, habiendo actuado lo suficiente como para perder la cuenta. Todos se preguntan ¿cómo serÃa? ¿Cómo serÃa acercarse al centro del cÃrculo?
Camarillas de social existe, chisme es compartido, hacer argumentos, amenazas es hacer. Un lider a veces levantar los pelota metafórica y regresar a las casas. Estudiantes abandonar, o unirse un otra grupo, o comenzar sus grupa de sus y liders negarse mentionar sus estudiantes perdidos nunca mas. A traves de estos ojos, maestros parece las “chicas-pesadas”
Con un perspectivo agotado de religiosidad, una actividad que eso deberÃa ser beneficiosa (o lo peor benigno), que un comunidad poder construir alrededor y gentes poder hallar conexión con sus indigenista, or mundial, herencia desciende en drama de casi puro. Vicioso luchas de poder por la posición en la lÃnea de coro…plumas…cintas…pedazos de papel.
Una Premisa Simple (O los Problemo con ateos todos)
Las regla es simple: “La religión se vuelve más benigna cuanto menos en serio se la toma.”
Por razones de brevedad: No creo en los sobrenatural. Soy "ateo" (mas complicado: igteismo, naturalismo metadelogico si! naturalismo filosofica no!) Ahora yo reflejo en mas que 20 anos de conversaciones, debate y argumentacion pienso todos nosotros hay hacir una error que es dificil poner en palabras.
Entonces esta muchas confusión y frustración, porque muy a menudo resultó ateos, como yo, eran exigentes creyentes tomar en serio sus religios y ellos no, cuando nosotros insistio ellos deben.
Eso es los dificultad, que significa tomar religión en serio o no? Tu tomar en serio si tu santiguarse cuando tu pasar una iglesia, y baja tu cabeza en oración en orden sientes los presencia de los espÃritu a tu lado? O tu tomar en serio de cuestionar afirmaciones religiosas como nosotros las cientÃfica?
Mayoria gentes mundial, parece a mi práctica sus religiosidad en un benigno vÃa de orando “Querido Señor yo espero conseguir esta trabajo…” y marcar eventos en el vidas como matrimonio y muertes via religioso-ish ritos.
Religión es para mucho gentes, un poco como una producto de Apple: funciona para ellos entonces no requerir mas explanación. Ateos y Apologistas eso más como usuarios de Linux en esta analogÃa.
Que yo entiendes como “serio” en esta entrada, sera gentes tomar el actitud que "si A entonces B" acerca de reclamos sobrenaturales.
“Si tu dejar el hielo al sol, va a derretir” es un reclamo naturale porque es un explicación naturalismo.
“Si tu consultar los planetas y los estrellas se va entiendas el futuro” es un reclamo sobrenatural porque no* es explicacion naturalismo.
En Australi, Cristianos, Judios a más recientemente Musalmanes es acostumbrado a hablar con pendejos como yo. Fue muy diferente para mi cuando era introducir a los escena Indigenismo de Guadalajara. Cuando la gente me pregunta “Heeeey Tomas did you feel the energy carnal?!” y yo dije “No.” ellos estaban estupefactos, como si yo no percibà el viento que soplaba o el calor del sol. Me quede con la impresión que interactuar con una comunidad sin encuentro pequeño a nada escepticismo sobrenatural.
Y esta harÃa hacer los gilipolla de mi, si no hubiera gentes que tomarán religión de indigenismo muy serio, y ellos sucesivamente no dar gentes autoridad espiritual sobre ellos, autoridad tomado a la ligera probablemente porque es sientes buenos a siento importante.
*la astrologÃa tiene una explicación naturalista los efecto Forer.
Una Apuesta Sencilla
Lo que pienso es que la gente piensan que una iglesia y un negocio son muy diferentes.
Primera camino - tomar alguien que mala administrativan una previamente negocio exitos hundió en el suelo, y yo apuesto si tu ponlos a cargo un grupo religioso ellos lo haran mala administrativa eso grupo tambien.
Secundo camino - si tu tomar una sacerdote, chamán o curandero quien es en cargo de grupo religioso es contracción y muriendo y ponlos a cargo un negocio exito, los negocio tambien ser contracción y muriendo, yo apuesto.
El Ejemplo Perfecto de Maestro Meza
Asà que este es un ejemplo para demostrar lo que quiero decir con tomar una religión en serio, en lugar de tratarla como algo significativo.
La afirmación del maestro Meza sólo es necesaria si se toma en serio la religiosidad de la religión mexica o azteca. Es decir, estás recurriendo a Danza Azteca, no para aprender tu herencia, participar en comunidad y hacer ejercicio (aunque lo hagas), sino para lograr algo espiritual, como sanar, o poner el cosmos en orden o algo asÃ.
En otras palabras, en lugar de simplemente interesarse por lo que la gente hizo hace mucho tiempo (como los recreadores históricos), quiere hacer lo que la gente hizo hace mucho tiempo. (como brujas)
Es muy difÃcil practicar una religión en el siglo XXI si exige que se sacrifiquen seres humanos con regularidad.
Es interesante que cuando el cristianismo se vuelve peligroso es cuando la gente se interesa activamente en lo que dice el libro. Los españoles destruyeron los libros mexicas, por lo que Danza Azteca se vuelve peligrosa cuando la gente ignora los textos y artefactos que tenemos.
Para intentar una analogÃa, las personas que toman la "energÃa" generada por sus prácticas religiosas indÃgenas lo suficientemente en serio como para que yo entienda que les parece como si hubieran horneado un pastel y alguien, transgrediendo algún aspecto del ritual o rito, hubiera estornudado sobre ese pastel y ahora hay que tirarlo.
Una cosa es que un ateo como yo tome a la ligera la religiosidad de otras personas, cuando vienen a mà angustiadas por algún tema y yo sarcásticamente les respondo "alguien estornudó en el pastel invisible? Dios mio! Mis ojos lloran por ti!" Otra cosa es que los lÃderes que han construido la comunidad a partir de creyentes serios y sinceros los tomen a la ligera.
Entonces, para mÃ, si usted es lo que preferirÃa llamar un custodio de la cultura indÃgena viva, enseñando música, danza, artesanÃa, deportes, cocina, etc. y sus estudiantes vienen y demuestran que se lo toman muy en serio, usted tiene un deber. de cuidado como maestro y lÃder para comprender su preocupación por los pasteles invisibles que usted les dice que horneen.
Incidente Incitar
Por mi, los incidente incitar esta entrada fue el cancelados de Danza del Sol 2023.
Yo deberia claro ser en declaracion que no se que paso, solo tengo rumores. En facto los todo cosa podria haber sido una broma solo por imperder mi venir. Yo tambien no intentar a los jugar el jeugo de la culpa o arrastrar alguienes nombre por el barro. Escrivo es porque cuida a es, y lo que sucedio yo veo mas como una sÃntoma a los asunto mas grande surgiendo de los la mala gestión de la religiosidad seria como yo escriva como arriba.
Aunque tengo confianza que alguno disrupción importante básicamente rompio los comunidad que hay performa Danza del Sol por aproximadamente 20~30 anos o mas.
Se deberÃa nota que yo no lo construà los cÃrculo y en un mano eso es los jefes a ruptura si ello quieran. Y los otra mano estan es mucha gente invertido en ese cÃrculo.
Lo que escuche, es básicamente un asunto de sucesión y tal vez polemicamente a los gentes de ambos lados que veas es un negro-y-blanco asunto, pienso la pregunta es legitima.
Aqui es un sumacion de el asunto como lo imagino:
Danza del Sol es una rito de hombres, es liderado por los bailarines masculinos.
Una las compañera de jefe es relativamente nueva de los cÃrculo.
Se convirtio cuestionada quien superado en rango quien en las cadena de mando femenil.
Entonces donde pienso es una pregunta legÃtimo, es tal vez por motivos academicos. Es tipa pregunta que de los molesto y poco confiable ateos preguntan cuando tratando de tenar sentido de religiosidad. Por ejemplo los jefe en pregunta tuves uno matrimonio anterior y una hija de los matrimonio anterior. Entonces hace una esposa de jefe superada en rango las mujeres mayores en el circulo? Hace esposa secunda superada en rango las esposa primera? Hace las hija de matrimonio primera superada en rango los esposa secunda?
Es posible que los jefe puedes consultar un jefe de los Lakotas, pero pienso esta preguntas legitimo eran simplemente imprevistos.
Pienso ellos no tienes una respuesta en los religión misma. Una decision simplemente tuvo que ser hecho.
Siento las respuesta reside en sentido comun, eso es un pregunta gerencial.
Por ejemplo, si un bailarÃn completo ocho de Danzas del Sol y despues una hermano mayor de los bailarÃn o las hermana mayor de las bailarina paso por un divorcio y decidio empezar Danza del Sol; sospecho la mayoria de la gente basarÃa la rango no en la edad sino en la experiencia. Uno podria observe esto en la práctica: los hombres mayores ceden ante los hombres más jóvenes que habÃan completado más Danzas del Sol.
Las otra principal de sentido común es que es razonable suponer alguien que se une a una organización y pasado decadas ganando promociones, jamas se une con los expectación que una dia los jefe tal vez solo promotor su amigo o novia en carga de ti y el divicion que tu manejan.
Eso no es que lo paso aqui. Yo asumirá casi todos estaban ciegos a los situación. Puedo ciertamente veo un posicion dificil por los jefe en pregunta, porque yendo con sentido comun que dice rango es basaria en la experiencia no connecion de los familia, tal vez enfrentó el final de una relación que le importaba.
Una vez que agrega afirmaciones sobrenaturales, agrega otros beneficios que las personas podrÃan buscar, en particular la espiritualidad y la curación (fÃsica, emocional, psicológica).
Ahora el deber de diligencia vuelve a nosotros. Hago una predicción y no tengo los números: por cada grupo que se reúne para bailar salsa, tango o valses en un parque, es probable que menos de uno sea alguien que busque utilizar la danza para ejercer control sobre sus caóticas vidas. De vez en cuando, es posible que te encuentres con un chico que espera que aprender el baile prohibido le gane a una mujer que lo rechazó o tal vez salve su matrimonio.
Esto no sucede en los clubes deportivos. SÃ, los hombres adultos rompen a llorar cuando sus equipos pierden, pero es una cosa muy diferente estar tan involucrado emocionalmente en un juego que pierdes la perspectiva, y otra creer que un paso en falso podrÃa hacer que el cáncer de tu madre regrese.
Para los lÃderes del grupo, sin embargo, surge una tremenda responsabilidad cuando tienen que cuidar a las personas que vienen buscando respuestas. El instructor de salsa o de tango tiene una ortodoxia, porque hay una coreografÃa, o es con el pie izquierdo o con el pie derecho. Pero no está en juego nada más que la sincronización de los bailarines.
Nunca estuve cerca de hacerme inteligible cuál era el significado religioso de Danza Azteca, asà que perdónenme por inventar mi ejemplo, pero en Danza Azteca un lÃder tal vez está lidiando con alguien que piensa que si no solo ellos, sino si todos no lo hace bien, Huitzilopochtli se enojará y, como resultado, nunca se reconciliarán con su padre separado.
Ahora bien, creo que existe alguna versión del indigenismo que podrÃa existir como una práctica secular, preservando la mayorÃa de los beneficios sin hacer afirmaciones sobrenaturales y, por lo tanto, sin asumir responsabilidades muy serias por la salud mental, emocional y espiritual de las personas. Creo que la transición serÃa dolorosa para muchos y que es poco probable que los lÃderes actuales den la vuelta y renuncien a su autoridad espiritual.
En mi primer año, el consenso parecÃa ser de unos 8 m, o el final del camino antes del claro principal. El segundo dÃa del segundo año la respuesta cambió a 40 m o la cima del mismo camino.
Ahora estoy feliz como invitado de mostrar respeto por las creencias de los demás, estoy feliz de quitarme los zapatos para apoyar y animar a los bailarines. Pero detalles como este (de los cuales hay docenas, si no cientos) parecen en gran medida arbitrarios.
Danza del Sol es un excelente ejemplo por todo el secretismo. Mucha gente se lo toma muy en serio y trata de hacer las cosas correctamente, pero no hay forma de tener un debate constructivo sobre dónde deben estar los zapatos, porque no está realmente organizado. Probablemente solo haya opiniones diferentes.
Supongo que algo es correcto hasta que alguien con autoridad diga lo contrario.
No es que no haya escrituras para consultar, el curandero Lakota John Lame Deer dictó una descripción de Danza Del Sol en el libro "Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions", especÃficamente el capÃtulo "Mirando al Sol, bailan". La Tribu Sangre del pueblo Blackfoot invitó a un documentalista a filmar la reunión de Danza del Sol en Alberta, Canadá, en 1960. Hay fotografÃas de reuniones de Danza del Sol que datan de 1909, antes del tabú de la fotografÃa.
Es difÃcil para una religión tener un tabú contra la filmación y la fotografÃa cuando la tecnologÃa aún no se ha inventado. Sospecho que en el caso de Danza del Sol, si les preguntara a los lÃderes sobre los zapatos, mi experiencia se ajustarÃa al estereotipo rabÃnico: hazle una pregunta a tres rabinos y obtendrás cinco opiniones.
Uno de mis amigos publicó la imagen de arriba sobre Danza Azteca, defendiendo la idea de convertir Danza Azteca en un espectáculo. Siendo tedioso, lo que desafiarÃa es la importancia de la autenticidad: como las pocas plumas y la ropa sencilla que usaban los mexicas antes de la conquista española. Lo que no sabemos es cuántas plumas elegirÃan usar los mexicas si de repente se volvieran tan baratas y abundantes como lo son en el siglo XXI. Me imagino que los antiguos mexicas actuarÃan de la misma manera que los mexicanos modernos, queriendo usar trajes llamativos cuando el mercado los ponga a disposición.
John Lame Deer reconoció en los años 60 y 70 que la Danza del Sol tenÃa que adaptarse a los tiempos, de manera similar, la idea de que la cultura mexica era monolÃtica la veo como un sÃntoma de querer controlar la propia vida con poderes sobrenaturales.
Creo que es la construcción indeginista sobre la base del indigenismo lo que las ha convertido, con demasiada frecuencia, en organizaciones autoritarias donde la comunidad termina sirviendo a los lÃderes, no los lÃderes sirviendo a la comunidad, como podrÃa indicar la ruptura del cÃrculo en 2023.
No hay excepción al capitalismo
"delfines y dinero" eslogan de portal de la Nueva Era en Rationalwiki. Es broma, pero es mis experiencia tambien...
Esto significa que en una ciudad tan grande como GDL-Zapopan, si a la gente no le gusta cómo manejas Danza Azteca, pueden irse y unirse a otro grupo. Además, lo que en las escuelas de negocios se denominan "barreras de entrada" son muy bajas. Uno solo necesita un espacio en el que tengan permiso para hacer ruido y bailar para comenzar su propio grupo. Carlos hizo esto, comenzó un cÃrculo en un parque público en España y luego, creo, encontró un hogar más permanente con el permiso del propietario del terreno.
SerÃa muy difÃcil para cualquier alumno establecer una escuela de música indÃgena competidora al lado. La escuela de música requiere mucho capital y el lÃder que controla esos activos tiene una gran capacidad para comportarse como un autoritario.
Lo mismo ocurre con el temescal, que requiere propiedad suficiente para construir la cabaña para sudar y un fuego, y todas las esteras y mantas y un espacio para guardarlas. El Temescal no es algo que cualquiera pueda instalar en cualquier parque público, y eso sin contar con la necesidad de consagrar el sitio con alguna autoridad religiosa. Nuevamente el dueño de los bienes tiene gran capacidad para comportarse como un autoritario.
Y Danza del Sol requiere la mayor cantidad de propiedades hasta el momento. El libro de John Lame Deer me dio la impresión de que Danza del Sol podrÃa representarse prácticamente en cualquier lugar al aire libre, pero dado que es una tarea logÃstica enorme, tener una propiedad con la cocina, el refugio, las áreas de almacenamiento, letrinas, acceso a las enormes cantidades de leña necesaria... aquà es donde la autoridad de un lÃder puede volverse absoluta, como hemos visto hasta el punto de que una persona decide en última instancia si se celebra o no Danza del Sol.
Hago estas analogÃas de mercado para sugerir que el problema subyacente no es de personalidad sino estructural. La desorganización y la mala gestión son un lujo del poder monopólico, y esto dificulta que la comunidad aborde estos problemas, porque implica la posesión de activos. El primer paso es verlo.
Tampoco se deben dejar de lado los problemas de personalidad. La autoridad y el estatus conferidos por los poderes monopólicos probablemente atraigan a ciertas personalidades. La ruptura del cÃrculo en 2023 puede ser literalmente una historia sobre estatus y estima. No creo que sea casualidad que Don VÃctor dirija el grupo que dirige, como lo hace, como tampoco creo que sea casualidad que los lÃderes de M y Danza del Sol tengan la personalidad que tienen, y dirijan los grupos como hacer.
Sin embargo, la única personalidad que puedes esperar cambiar es la tuya. Esta es una manifestación de que "la religión se vuelve más benigna cuanto menos en serio se la toma". El poder que disfruta el liderazgo se basa en gran medida en cuántas personas necesitan creer las afirmaciones sobrenaturales que se hacen sobre el indigenista. Te pones en peligro al necesitar una figura de autoridad que te transmita la verdadera ortodoxia, y por favor pregúntate: te estás diciendo a ti mismo que la razón por la que ves tan pocas demostraciones de poder mágico debe ser porque los viejos lÃderes sabios mantienen el conocimiento en secreto?
Puede parecer muy alejado del capitalismo, pero el estatus es estatus y la estima es estima.
"Una cosa es una cosa y otra cosa tambien es capitalismo."
A mi, como un compañero de una estudiante de M era invitada de cenas, sacado a para mis cumpleanos y dado pensativo regalos. Soy agradecido para todo lo recibido.
El viaje a M incluyó que nuestro alojamiento en hotel estuviera cubierto por M, dejando solo comer y transportación es gastos.
En inglese tenemos una dicho “he who pays the piper picks the tune” [lit.el que paga al flautista elige la melodÃa.] y aplica para el viaje al DF. No puedo excluye que los una noche de alojamiento recrea los poder de monopolio que yo habla antes.
Es muy lejos en el pasado por mi tengas los tikets, pero me fui con los impresión distinta que a pesar de que tenemos una noche alojamiento cubierto, los viaje al DF costo igual que Ale y mis otra fin semanas en DF.
Los gastos terminó coincidiendo porque en cambio de utilizar DF’s metro sistema de tren muy impressivo, nosotros utilizar uber ir a todos partes. Tambien nosotros comista en restaurantes caros relativo, jamas vendadores ambulantes (hasta rompi filas una mañana).
Yo tambien tengas los impresion que es menos consenso de las grupa y mas los preferencias personales de los organizador. Por supuesto yo no puedes probar eso. No votas o consultacion tuvo lugar para consenso ser alcanzado, pero tal vez todas cosas habia sido antes de tiempo. Mis impresion era menos que estudiantes habar una subvencionado viaje a DF, y mas los organizador habar subvencionado compania.
Hablando de, lo que recuerdo es que Ale era una de los dos únicos estudiantes en el viaje. Si bien el grupo completo era de 7 u 8 personas, las actividades y excursiones de un dÃa estaban relacionadas con los indÃgenas. M es una escuela pequeña de todos modos. Por eso, tal vez no sea sorprendente que sólo pudieran venir dos de ocho estudiantes. El viaje fue opcional, es posible que otros estudiantes hayan tenido compromisos ese fin de semana.
Ahora, soy notoriamente tacano, entonces yo deberia esta ejample para abordar la demografia…
Demografia 1: Pobres Indigenistas.
Mi impresión de los grupos indÃgenas fue que en general eran gratis. M yo creo incluso pagado estudiantes para actuaciones en fin semanas. No lo se.
Ahora bien, decir que es gratis no significa que sean gorrones (normalmente). La gente frecuentemente traÃa comida, ayuda con el trabajo, etc.
En el otro lado, una cosa que impresionado en me era es indigenista era muy perdida de tiempo y fisicamente exigente. Normalmente Danza Azteka tomar una hor de casi danza continual. M tiena dos classes por semana y probabalmente actuacion en de fin semana al menos una vez por mes. Temescal tambien era mensual y normalmente tomo un dia entero. Danza del Sol tomo quatro dias por la rito y muchos gentes es aya por los semana entero etc.
Opuesto a eso, he oido rumor que habia tabúes contra heches ganancia de indigenista. Por ejemplo no se suponia que debia charga dinero por fumar un pipa sagrada de tabaco etc. Indigenesta no era una seminario inmobiliario. No es se vendo en hacerse rico.
Grupas indigenista entonces, selectar para gentes que es rico en tiempo y pobres en dinero. Puedes hecho una predicción que mas que medio de los participantes sera trabajes en los economÃa informal (“gigging” etc.), subempleado o desempleados.
Siento, hay una invisible pero muy efectivo filtrar en su lugar para seleccionar por participantes que es rico en tiempo y pobres en dinero, y seleccionar contra participantes que es rico en dinero y pobres en tiempo.
Eso es ir a exacerbar los autoridad de gentes que controlan los capital de indigenista. Hay una brecha de la riqueza pude ver a primera mano. Donde los diferencia es en poco vias una vida real refleccion de “Kamp Krusty”
Como viven los estudiantes indeginistas
Como viven los jefes indeginistas.
Por supuesto, eso es una exageración. Ale y yo vivimos muy bien, poco de casas de jefes yo veo sugirió un estilo de vida casi espartano.Pero en unos pocos casos, mi confianza en que los jefes aprecian el deber de diligencia se basó en personas muy comprometidas que fueron criticadas por su falta de compromiso por parte de jefes que no hacen las cosas que se les pide.
Yo vea primera mano, una de mis amigos y una de mas dedicado y entusiasta indeginista convertise a una “gente innombrable” sobre algunas punto falta de ortodoxia o comprometida.
Yo sabia no menos que tres participantes, incluye Ale, que hacer todos de actividades indigenista que yo estuvo expuesto a. HabÃa probablemente mas porque siempre veÃa caros familiar. Alguna de gentes estaban poniendo horas suficiente de esta actividades voluntarias que ellos calificar a trabajos de media tiempo.
Aunque fue de oidas, y es probablemente/con un poco de suerte todos es en el pasado ahora, poco indigenistas eran criticado por ir a mensual Temescal en GDL y no en los montaña. Significado no es sufficiente que gentes rendirse un domingo por mes para observar temescal, ellos deberÃan tambien agregar dos horas de autobus viajes y senderismo alta y abeja una montana, con el fin de comprometida por verdad.
Esta adherencia a la lealtad dentro del grupo es lo que resulta tan tóxico del Partido Republicano en Estados Unidos. Entonces un poco de suerte todos es en el pasado ahora...
Para mÃ, escuchar las crÃticas fue indirectamente discordante, porque provenÃan de personas que no participan en absoluto. Ahora bien, la crÃtica en sà es de oÃdas, asà que no puedo dar testimonio de la verdad de eso, pero la planteo como otro ejemplo perfecto (si es cierto) de que el indigenista no es una excepción del capitalismo, y quizás un excelente ejemplo del mismo.
Aqui es una grupa de gentes que aceptar los obligado de vamosss a temescal una de mes, probable porque lo disfrutan. Solia ser una monopolio donde todos gentes en GDL necesitas tuvo que recorrer un largo camino con el fin de participar. Entonces, una competitor abrirse, offerte una mas economico y mas convenienza alternativo y los montaña temescal pierde costumbre, prestigio, tal vez incluso viabilidad. Sin tener que enrolar en los Escuela de Ciencias Económicas de Chicago, eso es una empuje instintivo para destruir los competiciones y reiniciar una monopolio.
Siento, bastante fuertemente, que el hecho de que los grupos indigenistas apliquen una presión estructural sobre sus participantes para que sean pobres en efectivo y ricos en tiempo iba a ruptura el cÃrculo con el tiempo de todos modos.
Danza del Sol es increible dificil para gentes con trabajos tiempo-completo y ninos a cuidar, y el preguntas los de compromiso una semana de los vacaciones annuales basicamente de el sus resto de vidas por viniendo el mismo lugar, en el mismo tiempo, especialmente cuando tu agradar los compromiso a participar en ciclos de quatro anos.
Es mas o menos fácil que predecir los joven jefes con trabajos y niños en algún momento en los futuro próximamente dirán “Mira, mis hijos tienen esa edad y quiero llevarlos a Disneylandia, asà que no iremos este año”.
Mexico es modernizando y es una solución disponible, que es ser menos exigente del jovens y pobres y promover mas viejo participantes que no mas tienen que preocuparse de criando ninos, de posición de liderazgo.
La veneración supersticiosa del número 4 puede ser un problema, pero aparentemente no lo será en 2023.
La primera fue en una exposición temporal gratuita en el Museo Arqueológico. Hubo muchas exhibiciones fascinantes que Ale y yo disfrutamos, incluido un diagrama pintado que ilustra las primeras teorÃas coloniales sobre la raza o "Casta", incluido cómo producir una persona china mezclando padres africanos e indios. Que loco.
A menudo tuve la impresión en indigenista de que, tanto entre los participantes como entre los lÃderes, estaba experimentando hijos de un divorcio cultural. Niños que elegÃan ver a papá (España) como un monstruo holgazán y a mamá (Gentes Indigenistas) como nobles santos.
Pocas personas parecÃan capaces de sentir ambivalencia sobre ambos aspectos de su herencia; en este caso ambivalente significa "en ambos sentidos", es decir, orgullo y vergüenza, como lo siento yo por mi herencia europea y mi herencia australiana.
Una cosa es apasionarse por la cultura y el patrimonio indigenista y promoverlo y enseñarlo. Otra cosa es que los lÃderes sean chovinistas al respecto.
Esta actitud, de que desde Groenlandia hasta Chile todo era perfecto hasta que llegaron los europeos y arruinaron las cosas, es a la vez inmadura y peligrosa. Creo que es el mismo tipo de pensamiento que impulsa a Putin a intentar invadir Ucrania, y a Xi a someter a Hong Kong y el TÃbet y a querer invadir y reclamar Taiwán y que ha alimentado el conflicto en Oriente Medio durante siglos.
Sin embargo, de manera más inmediata, dado que no veo que los imperios mexica o comanche vuelvan a surgir, predice la inmadurez del liderazgo. Que los lÃderes entre grupos indÃgenas se niegan a hablar entre ellos, que los grandes eventos se cancelan porque alguien no se sale con la suya, que no se pueden mencionar los nombres de exalumnos.
Por supuesto, se podrÃa decir lo mismo en el sentido contrario, pero lo lamentable es que los hechos exigen explicación. El caso contra el sacrificio humano ritual mesoamericano ahora probablemente sea similar al caso del reverendo Lovejoy de que Bart y no su hija robó el dinero de la canasta de recolección:
"Obviamente los Españoles de alguna manera han colado sus restos de sacrificios humanos debajo de nuestros templos Mexicas...USEN SU IMAGINACIÓN GENTE!"
Nuevamente creo que el único obstáculo para que los grupos indigenistas eviten el indigenismo e integren la sombra del indigenismo es la religiosidad, la necesidad de que los ritos y rituales no sean buenos en sà mismos, sino que curen a los enfermos, etc.
Demografia 2: Acantilado Demográfico
Creo que la ruptura del cÃrculo de Danza del Sol era realmente una cuestión de tiempo. Es bueno observar algunos otros factores demográficos.
Ésta es la composición actual de la escena indigenista: muchas mujeres New-age que creen, francamente, en todo.
Lo cual estarÃa bien, he leÃdo suficientes novelas de fantasÃa como para haberme encontrado con filosofÃas de la magia impulsadas por las creencias, los rituales y hechizos son casi arbitrarios mientras uno crea.
Este es el ambiente donde un hombre adulto puede llorar porque se rompió la piel de un tambor o porque un perro hizo caca en el cÃrculo, pensando que han matado a alguien.
"Un perro hizo caca y ahora mis abuela es nunca." es broma pero tambien es muy serio...
Lo más importante es que este cóctel demográfico predice la desaparición de Danza del Sol a largo plazo, porque en Danza del Sol abundan las contradicciones.
Las religiones estrictas son las comunidades religiosas que están creciendo, comunidades como los Amish.
Danza del Sol es estricta en el sentido de que la cultura es muy autoritaria y exige mucho de sus participantes, pero probablemente falla cuando se trata de la advertencia crucial de que las comunidades religiosas que crecen generalmente están libres de contradiccion.
Danza del Sol no es estricta, aunque mi primera impresión me decÃa que sà lo era. No se permiten fotografÃas, pero uno de los jefes pintó un cuadro de la Danza del Sol, ilustrando las ofrendas y está en exhibición en la casa de otro lÃder. Todos deben quitarse los zapatos, a menos que sean los tamborileros. Las mujeres deben hacer juntas un viaje secreto antes del danza, a menos que sean la pareja del jefe, que puede ir cuando quiera. El tabaco es sagrado y la única medicina permitida. Pero la gente fuma cigarrillos todo el tiempo. Los bailarines deben purificarse mediante el ritual antes de hacer una ofrenda a los dioses, a menos que seas amigo de uno de los jefes.
En otras palabras, era demasiado humano. Hacer exactamente las cosas por las que Luthor criticaba al Papado. Puede que no sea accesible para la dirigencia, pero la salud de la organizacións claramente podrÃa estar determinada por los chismes que generan Danza del Sol y M.
Esto se refleja en la disminución de las tasas de participación y los dirigentes no están asumiendo la responsabilidad. Me queda la impresión de que preferirÃan que la comunidad muriera y tomara caminos separados antes que renunciar a cualquier parte de su estima, privilegio y autoridad. Esa es la predicción que harÃa, según el comportamiento.
Según tengo entendido, las mujeres estaban siendo rechazadas debido a la escasez de hombres. Otros hombres fueron presionados a empezar a bailar para aumentar los números cerca del 50:50. El problema era que a Peter le estaban robando para pagarle a Paul.
Lo que no puedo excluir es que tocar la baterÃa es más prestigioso y mucho más fácil que ayudar en el campamento. Pierdes la voz, tal vez te salga una ampolla en el pulgar, pero tienes mucho tiempo para salir con tus amigos, fumar tabaco y evitar levantar objetos pesados. Casi todos los hombres que llegaron durante mi último año se unieron al cÃrculo de tambores.
La Danza De La Luna probablemente tenga un futuro brillante, pero en Danza del Sol se permitió una cultura que, en mi opinión, significó la perdición de Danza del Sol.
Noto cosas, y noto todo lo bueno de Danza del Sol. Por eso deseo que se gestione bien y que su futuro parezca brillante. Hay grandes personas allà que no sólo merecen, sino que se les debe dar más responsabilidad. Es una hazaña impresionante para un esfuerzo comunitario realizado casi en su totalidad por voluntarios.
Incluso antes de el cÃrculo se rompio, sentà que tenÃa un adelanto de lo que vendrÃa. En mi primer año, el cÃrculo decidió que hoy en dÃa no habÃa ninguna razón para que una mujer no pudiera hacer una ofrenda, y estaba permitida. Probablemente fue una cuestión de opinión, pero tiendo a estar de acuerdo con esta opinión.
Continuando con el punto demográfico, aunque no por mucho más tiempo.
Una ironÃa memorable fue asistir a la presentación de un libro escrito por un lÃder que era un libro para niños. En el lanzamiento estuvieron presentes dos niños, los nietos del autor. Todos los demás adultos. Incluso algunas abuelas fanáticas...
Gabo estaba allà e hizo lo de contar historias, por desgracia, esta vez con sólo dos niños para actuar para.
Esos niños no van a escribirle a su polÃtico local protestando contra el comercio de pieles, no necesitan que les muestren imágenes gráficas ni que les griten por su decadencia moral, ni que escuchen el indigenismo. Luego, el lÃder progresó hasta perder por completo a la multitud con sus actuaciones musicales.
Una y otra vez, solo tengo mis impresiones, pero estos eventos me hablaron de lÃderes desconectados y autoindulgentes. No actuaron para el público sino para ellos mismos.
Enrique IV de Francia, uno de los Reyes franceses menos malos, juega bien con los niños.
Los Problemas de Pedagogia con Danza Azteca
Asà que no dejo libre a Danza Azteca, con un poco de suerte puedo aligerar el humor con mi luchas personal.
Soy una persona que lucha entre “derecha” e “izquierda”. Necesito detenerme y pensar en ello. No puedes simplemente gritarme "izquierda" y esperar a que gire, debes estar listo para gritar "tu otra izquierda!".
En Danza Azteca, inmediatamente te arrojan al fondo. Otra ves, Don Victor es muy gentil. No le preocupa si yo o alguien más renunciamos a las piruetas.
Tambien en el centro, puedes ver a ninos y jovens que es aficionados de K-Pop o tienes ambicioso de TikTok influencer intentando coreografia danza via locatar uno edificio de oficinas con grandes ventanas reflectantes.
Principalmente cuando se enseña danza, la coreografÃa se divide en pequeños trozos. La gente lo toma poco a poco hasta que aprendes los pasos, los juntas y luego los haces con música.
Danza Azteca es como:
No puedes designes una peor ambiente de aprendizaje para una gente como yo. Tengo que: copiar los pasos de los persona liderando el circulo en tiempo real mientras invertado izquierda y derecho porque nosotros nos movemos en circulo.
Todo vez que vamos a Danza Azteca, siempre he pensado "DeberÃa secularizarlo, enseñarlo como otros estilos de baile. Apuesto a que tendrÃa un montón de estudiantes si conociera los bailes".
Tal vez clases de Danza Azteca existe. Veo alguna grupal muy bien, muy competitivo llevar a cabo.
Es sólo mi opinión, pero creo que el indigenismo a largo plazo es inviable; si la organización/movimiento crece, tropezará cada vez más con el registro histórico y arqueológico tal como lo hacen las religiones abrahámicas. No creo que sea viable desarrollar y mantener una ortodoxia interna o unas "reglas internas" salvaguardadas por una-a-cuatro personas.
Intente hablar con otras personas en indigenista sobre cualquier problema que perciba. Si tienes miedo o te sientes intimidado a expresar crÃticas a un lÃder, entonces ya tienes suficiente problema.
El mayor problema, sostengo, es estructural. Si reparas la estructura, las personalidades te seguirán.
Mi poder son mis palabras, mi voz, mi escritura. Intento presentar un caso para convencerte, no para controlarte y aceptar la responsabilidad de mis fracasos.
