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BILL MOYERS: And then there is that final passage through the dark gate?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s no problem at all. The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to lose it, is to identify yourself, not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. And when you can do that, and this is something learned from my myths, What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? And this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go, like an old car there goes the fender, there goes this. But it’s expectable, you know, and then gradually the whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I mean, that’s it’s no longer in this particular environment.

https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-3-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-the-first-storytellers-audio/

Joseph Campbell - Prodigious expanse of space is sublime. This is a thing that the Buddhists know how to achieve in their temples. Particularly when I was in Kyoto, I was there for seven glorious months.

BILL MOYERS: In Japan.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yeah, visiting some of the temple gardens. They are so designed that you’re experiencing something here, and then you break past a screen and a whole new horizon opens out. And somehow with the diminishment of your own ego, the consciousness expands. This is the experience of the sublime. Another experience of the sublime is not of tremendous space, but of tremendous energy and power.

https://billmoyers.com/content/ep-6-joseph-campbell-and-the-power-of-myth-masks-of-eternity-audio/

While rehashing the horrors of the last four years, Masha Gessen urges readers to realize that Trump's regime cannot be described by the language of liberal democracy, but by Bálint Magyar's new vocabulary for post-soviet states. Without the language, we will not see the reality:

Mafia State: a state system where the government is tied with organized crime to the degree when government officials, the police, and/or military became a part of the criminal enterprise.

Kakistocracy: government run by the worst, least qualified, and/or most unscrupulous citizens

Totalitarian Ideology: An entirely encapsulated ideology; it’s impervious to any input from outside reality.

Gessen's reframing of the last four years into the realities of post-soviet states is more painful than remaining ignorant, but also more useful and the key to fighting authoritarianism. You should read Surviving Autocracy.

“Imagining isn't perfect. You can't get all the way inside someone else...But imagining being someone else, or the world being something else, is the only way in. It is the machine that kills fascists.”

— excerpt from Paper Towns by John Green.

At the risk of being indicted by the inevitable reiteration of the House Un-American Activities Committee, I read and I'm now reviewing Johnny Got his Gun by Dalton Trumbo.

I have read several classics of anti-war literature, but Johnny Got his Gun is the most pointed, unveiled, and unapologetic piece I have read so far. Joe Bonham is a calculated average American man of the 1930s who is hit by an artillery shell. The rest of the book follows the limbless, deaf, blind, and dumb soldier as he drags the reader through his pain only to tie it up as a reason to oppose all war.

After it was published in 1938 but "Trumbo and his publisher decided to suspend reprinting Johnny Got His Gun until the end of the war. During the war, Trumbo received letters from individuals "denouncing Jews" and using Johnny to support their arguments for "an immediate negotiated peace" with Nazi Germany; Trumbo reported these correspondents to the FBI. Trumbo regretted this decision, which he called "foolish". After two FBI agents showed up at his home, he understood that "their interest lay not in the letters but in me."[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Trumbo]

Johnny's Got His Gun has been unearthed over and over during the endless wars that America profited from by parents of maimed soldiers.

While Johnny Got His Gun is extremely blunt, so are the horrors of war.

If you want a kitschy mashup of #JamesBond, #Lovecraft, and the IT Crowd (@ITCrowdSupport) , look no further than Charles Stross' (@cstross) #AtrocityArchives. It is glorious nerd popcorn.

Sarah Schulman's (@sarahschulman3) Conflict is not Abuse's thesis is in its title: those that overstate harm miss the benefits that can be gained from verbal conflict, negotiation, and empathy.

Schulman's argument starts with the self, moves to the relational, discusses conflict and abuse at the hands of the state, and concludes with the Israeli genocide upon the Palestinian people.

She defines abuse as someone inappropriately using the power they have over a victim and conflict in explicitly verbal terms and almost as debate or negotiation.

In the personal arena, Schulman starts an incredibly useful idea: negative fantasy. Schulman outlines the anxiety that causes individuals to assume they know the intent of another without asking them. The anxious individual then spins into negative fantasy or a daymare that causes them to make additional unfounded assumptions.

In interpersonal relationships, she discusses a mismatch of motivation. Individuals learn that the dichotomy of victim and perpetrator gives compassion to the victim and shunning to the perpetrator. Schulman suggests that individuals in a non-violent disagreement will take the role of victim to get the compassion that the role attracts. She concludes that a system of conflict mediation that provides compassion and understanding to both parties in a conflict would heal the individuals and the community involved.

Schulman argues that when individuals ask the state (police) to intervene in a conflict, they dole out punishment to the perpetrator that does little to help the victim. She also argues that individuals in a conflict will involve the state to enforce their will and the power of the state. She argues that a community around individuals in conflict is essential to produce real healing around conflicted individuals.

One of Schulman's most interesting points is that people who are victims of trauma and those who create trauma use the same tactic: claiming victimhood to avoid negotiation. Police will claim fear to justify the use of deadly force as traumatized people feel fear and claim victimhood to avoid pain.

Schulman's Conflict is not Abuse is an anti-authoritarian text that should help you understand the value of conflict negotiation so you can build it within yourself to avoid negative fantasy and within your community to strengthen it.

Harvey Milk lived many different lives before becoming the first openly gay politician in California:

"There were seemingly many Harveys as he drifted for years through various stages, fumbling to find the niche from which he could fulfill the high, vague aspirations of his childhood. There was Harvey the supermacho college jock and navy deep-sea diver. Harvey the high school math teacher and earnest mentor to young people. Harvey the buttoned-down Wall Street securities research analyst and cheerleader for the protolibertarian presidential candidate and darling of the right wing Barry Goldwater. Harvey the long-haired, bead-wearing hippie. Harvey the actor, associate producer, and gofer to a Broadway celebrity. Harvey the businessman and leader of a business community. Harvey the progressive politician and gay icon. Each earlier “life” represented some genuine (if contradictory) aspect of Harvey Milk—and in each transformation he thought for a while that he had found himself. But it was only in his final life, as an openly gay politician, that he discovered who he had wanted to be all along."

"He championed workers, women, racial minorities, the disabled, senior citizens—all who suffered at the hands of the fat-cat insiders. He fought hard for San Francisco’s strong gay rights ordinance; and he fought equally hard for rent control and the city’s divestment from apartheid South Africa. Harvey Milk’s politics were strongly influenced by his gay identity. But just as deep an influence was his Jewish identity, and especially the values that liberal Judaism holds dear."

Harvey Milk might be most famous for his prophesy: ""If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country." Milk would be proud to see the shattered remains of closet doors strewn about America.

If you'd like to know more about Harvey Milk, I suggest Harvey Milk: His Lives and Death by Lillian Faderman (@lillianfaderman).

https://slpl.bibliocommons.com/item/show/1421406116

The popular understanding of the Dulles name today peaks in conspiracy theories in the absence of a necessary understanding of how the Dulles brothers changed American foreign policy and fueled the Cold War.

The concentration of wealth, power, and privilege amassed by John Foster Dulles (JFD) and Allen Dulles (AD) is extreme. As boys, they learned about foreign policy from their grandfather, Secretary of State John W. Foster, while meeting diplomats and power brokers from all over the world. After passing the bar, JFD and AD joined the influential law firm Sullivan & Cromwell using his grandfather's influence. At Sullivan & Cromwell, they learned to force the foreign policy preferences of America's wealthiest individuals and businesses.

Both brothers were heavily influenced by WWII. AD started to work in espionage before any organized spy agency existed in the US. JFD continued to support American business with the Third Reich while AD united junior partners at Sullivan & Cromwell to stop JFD.

In 1953 Eisenhower appointed JFD as U.S. Secretary of State and AD as the Director of Central Intelligence. Together, the brothers enabled the US to impose its will and the will of its business interests on emerging nations in the name of fighting communism.

AD removed a democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadegh, and installed monarch Mohammed Reza Pahlavi after Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil in 1953.

AD and JFD's employment with Sullivan & Cromwell allied their interests with United Fruit Company who owned most of the farmable land in Guatemala. The Guatemalan people toppled the military dictatorship of Jorge Ubico and elected Juan Joes Arevalo who reformed land ownership in Guatemala and nationalized land that United Fruit was not using. AD deposed Juan Jose Arevalo by arming, funding, and training a force to install military dictator Carlos Castillo Armas, who banned opposition parties, imprisoned and tortured political opponents, and reversed the social reforms of Arevalo. AD also used propaganda from Mariano Rossell y Arellano, the Catholic Archbishop of Guatemala, to aid Castillo Armas' forces. Diego Rivera's "Glorious Victory" (see photo) critiques the American coup in Guatemala.

Allen Dulles and John Foster Dulles were the instrument of American business interests as they used the Cold War to build states friendly to their bottom lines. To understand how the world sees America, you must know the Dulles brothers.

One of the primary reasons I read is to answer the question "How could life be different?" Stross (@cstross) answers this question with the kind of depth and world building that I appreciate.

In music, an accelerando is a slow increase in the tempo. Stross' Accelerando explores the impact of Moore's Law[1] on human society as it reaches the singularity[2]. Skipping from the simple, computer tools humans use to speed their thinking to uploading human of minds, and finally to massive Matrioshka brains[3] that gave birth to a new post-human organism. Stross explores human culture's growth through the harnessing of power on the Kardashev scale[4], growth in capitalist economics in Capitalism 2.0, and growth in legal structures as humans try to understand the legal rights of an uploaded mind. Delightfully satirical, several of Stross' characters generate corporations and then enslave themselves to their own corporations. Still further, corporations become sentient algorithms.

Stross' scope, depth, and satire in Accelerando make this book (free) worth your time: www.accelerando.org/2005/06/28/

For a more complete analysis, read this: www.shaviro.com/Blog/?p=450

[1]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law
[2]en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
[3]www.youtube.com/watch?v=pP44EPBMb8A
[4]www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhFK5_Nx9xY

When white Evangelical Christians voted for Trump in overwhelming numbers, many people saw hypocrisy. How could Evangelical Christians overwhelmingly vote for a president they would punish their children for emulating?

Kristian Kobes Du Mez (@kkdumez) both condemns the harms of the Christian Evangelical movement while providing context and understanding for how the movement changed over 75 years. Starting with the increasingly masculine nature of Evangelical services in the 1910s, to Christian nationalism embodied by a love for the violent, imperialist, patriarchal John Wayne, Evangelical Christianity has claimed a simple interpretation of the Bible to support patriarchal and nationalist authority. Kobes Du Mez outlines the almost fantastical elements of Evangelist MMA, the Quiverfull movement, and Dare to Discipline. White Evangelical Nationalist history is pretty awful and wild. Reading Jesus and John Wayne will help you understand the madness.

Being an American, I hear that people are doing things because they are followers of Jesus Christ. I grew up Catholic, and I didn't really learn anything about Jesus in my Sunday school, first communion, confirmation, or Jesuit college theology class.

I wanted to know more about how the Jesus of Nazareth differs from Jesus Christ. Reza Aslan (@rezaaslan) uses a modern historical approach in Zealot to dissect the primary sources that report on Jesus of Nazareth to cut through Paul's Roman Christian mythology.

Aslan's claim in the book is that the Jesus of history just as compelling if not more compelling than Jesus of Paul's myth.

Zealot: www.goodreads.com/book/show/17568801-zealot

Like the other Wayfarers installments, The Galaxy and the Ground Within (Wayfarers 4) seems to answer a specific question: how would different sentient species need to interact to not be in constant war? While other science fiction novels seem to start with the tech and fill in the social blanks later, #BeckyChambers seems to consider them first. The first three installments of Wayfarers dove deep into the relationships between characters of different species and gender within one crew. Wayfarers 4 took that same concept and isolated characters in a space bed and breakfast. Again, Chambers wove characters and their development together wonderfully. I just can't recommend Wayfarers 4 or the other three enough.

7 days ago I asked myself "Why is Mayday?" Of course, many things have happened on May 1st over the years. However, if you are talking about labor solidarity in America, you mean the Haymarket Affair, something I knew nothing about.

I found an episode of the Most Notorious! podcast by @Erik_Rivenes that covered #DeathintheHaymarket by the late historian and labor activist #JamesGreen.

#DeathintheHaymarket uncovers the history of Chicago labor organizing around the 8-hour-day in the Gilded Age, its fall after Haymarket, and its legacy. In particular, Green covers the court that convicted and hung Albert Parsons, Adolph Fischer, George Engel, and August Spies for their ideas without proving a link to the Haymarket bomber.

Green's historical exposition and analysis reflects his labor activism. However, he uses a great number of primary sources from the perspectives of capital, police, and labor while covering the Affair.

If you don't truly understand what people are celebrating on May Day and Labor Day, this book is worth your time.

Like money, borders and nations exist in the minds of those that believe in them. Nations are built by separating those outside of their borders from inside of them. If you are anything like me, you spend most of your time in one national border and watch your leaders build power by building fear of those humans outside. The humans outside the walls and borders become less than human through the influence of the nation.

However, those outside the border are not less human than you.

Adi Alsaid brought the stories 15 border-crossing humans from outside of the borders and walls to your eyes and ears. Each story is unique, illuminating, and worth your time.