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It's no secret that ancient healing practices from all over the world have become increasingly popular in Western society over the past years and decades (hello yoga, Ayurveda, acupuncture and more). But for many, one particular concept is still shrouded in mystery, despite the widespread recognition of its central theme what exactly is shamanism?

"'Shaman' is an ancient term for a healer a person of medicine," Alberto Villoldo, Ph.D., founder of The Four Winds Society, says via email. "Shamans understand that the material world is an expression of a subtler energetic realm, and are able to interact with both realms at all times. They learned how to dream their world into being within this energetic realm, so they could participate in the creation and stewardship of reality."

Shamanism itself isn't tied to any single culture, but experts say the term "shaman" originated from the Tungus tribe in Siberia. The noun is formed from the verb a, which means "to know," so the term "shaman" literally translates to "one who knows."

While there are spiritual and mystical connotations to the term, Villoldo is careful to point out that the term "shaman" in and of itself is in no way tied to a specific religion or creed. "Lots of people believe that shamanism is a religion," he says. "While a number of religions may have evolved from shamanic tradition and many shamans around the world may also identify as members of organized religions shamanism is a spiritual practice."

A variety of formal religions are said to have roots in ancient shamanic traditions, but the specific practices and beliefs vary. According to the University of Minnesota's holistic health site, Taking Charge of Your Health & Wellbeing, shamanism is a "group of activities and experiences shared by shamans in cultures around the world. These practices are adaptable and coexist with different cultures, systems of government and organized religious practices."

In her book, "An Encyclopedia of Shamanism," author Christina Pratt says a shaman by definition is a person who has mastered three specific things: altered states of consciousness, acting as a medium between the needs of the spirit world and those of the physical world in a way that's useful to the community, and the ability to meet the needs of the community in ways that other practitioners (like doctors, psychiatrists and religious leaders) can't. In some cultures that may mean a shaman dispenses wisdom or leads ceremonies in areas including meditation and energy work, but again, the specifics of the practices will vary according to the culture.

According to the website Shaman Links: "Shamans work with the spirit or the soul. They heal illness at the soul level. They gain knowledge and insight from working with the spirits of nature such as rocks and trees, the land, and they gain knowledge from working with spirits of animals and humans such as their ancestors. For the shaman, everything is alive and carries information. You can call this spirit, energy, or consciousness.

"In order to communicate with the spirit or consciousness of these things, the shaman will shift his or her own state of awareness. Shamans can do this through various means, such as meditation, repetitive sounds such as that of the drum or rattle, or through the help of hallucinogenic plants. The shaman will then see through a new set of eyes, they will see what is going on with you on a spiritual level.

"The shamans practice is also characterized by the soul flight. The shift of consciousness that the shaman makes, which allows the free part of his or her soul to leave the body. The shaman can then go retrieve information for your healing and growth. They can retrieve healing power, or things that you have lost along the way in living your life. During the soul flight the shaman is both in the room, and going on this journey so that he or she has an awareness of both at the same time."

According to Villoldo, modern shamans are still very much in existence, and over its 25-year history, The Four Winds Society has mentored over 10,000 students in the field of "Shamanic Energy Medicine." "Today's shamans are the new caretakers of the earth," he says. "Even though we are not shaking feathers and rattles, or reading the oracle of the bones, we are nonetheless engaging with the luminous nature of reality."

While the concept of shamanism may be open to interpretation and variations, Villoldo says the overall shamanistic approach to health is distinct. "Western medicine, which I describe as a disease-care system, recognizes thousands of ailments and myriad remedies, while shamanic energy medicine identifies only one ailment and one cure," he says. "The ailment is alienation from our emotions, from our bodies, from the earth and from Spirit. The symptoms of this ailment are physical and emotional disease. The cure is the experience of Oneness, which restores inner harmony and facilitates recovery from all maladies, regardless of origin."

While there isn't much evidence to support the effectiveness of shamanic healing when it comes to disease, there are some studies that indicate that the interactive, soul-based healing practices inherent in some shamanic practices may be beneficial for some people. Some experts, like Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Ph.D., who wrote the 2002 paper, "What We Can Learn From Shamanic Healing: Brief Psychotherapy With Latino Immigrant Clients," published in the American Journal of Public Health, believe that the personal empowerment, behavior modification and cognitive restructuring encouraged by some shamans may be helpful for some people coping with physical, emotional or psychological issues. That said, there's no single certifying body that registers practitioners, so experts recommend that those interested in shamanism who are not living in indigenous cultures do some research and check out available resources, like the Foundation for Shamanic Studies.

Read the rest here:
What Is a Shaman and Can Anyone Become One? - HowStuffWorks

CHICAGO, IL - FEBRUARY 1: Harry Lennix, Jennifer A. Goodman, Ryan Atkins and Eric Roberts during the ... [+] Conrad Series Reboot screening at Davis Theatre on February 1, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)

Amidst the coronavirus pandemic, creators have been forced to find unique new ways to remain engaged with fans, as filming of television shows and movies remains shut down during shelter-in-place orders.

Conrad series co-creators Jennifer A. Goodman and and Ryan Atkins have been holding weekly webinars with stars like actor Harry Lennix (The Blacklist), who portrays lieutenant Don Brewer in the pilot episode of the new Lakefront Pictures crime drama.

Goodman and Atkins began pitching the pilot to networks last week despite the onset of COVID-19. While the crime drama genre can be a crowded corner of the network television sphere, Goodman and Atkins have gone to great lengths to ensure Conrad stands out.

Just another crime drama is a common saying that none of us want our project to fall within, said Atkins, who doubles as director of photography. What sets Conrad apart would be probably how deep the story goes and the characters that were focusing on.

Conrad isnt just a crime drama or a cop drama - its a story that really helms a young woman who is really trying to find her place in the world, added Goodman, who portrays detective Kate Conrad. She is guarded from life by her father - shes protected by her father - and shes really trying to make a name for herself. So its really about determination and surpassing expectations that have been set for you - which actually parallels my own personal life. Im on the Autism spectrum and I was always kind of guarded from society or told that I would not get to certain points in my life. And I have always surpassed that expectation. So, its really about empowering ones self to be true to who they are and what they believe in.

CHICAGO, IL - DECEMBER 02: Jennifer A. Goodman, Kelli Tidmore and Kristin Hum-Dell during the ... [+] Conrad series premier screening at the Gene Siskel Film Center on December 2, 2018 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)

Female empowerment is a theme that quickly emerges from the Conrad pilot. But the plot lines run much deeper.

Conrad kind of deals with some of the concerns that we have today over privacy - identity theft, things like that. Are you who you say you are? Not everything is as it seems in this story. But its a story about hope, said Atkins.

Its about the realities in terms of underground worlds and lives that we dont even realize are happening all around us every single day. And thats where a human trafficking piece comes in. We see a lot of people in this story who are kind of living double lives - who are kind of experiencing this world that they didnt mean to fall into but are involved with without even knowing it, Goodman elaborated. It kind of touches upon a greater depth than just everyday crime. It goes beyond more of the psychological story behind why someone may do something that they do. It leads into perspective that goes deeper than we may fathom, while empowering women in these fields to feel confident and forthcoming about what they want to do.

Conrad was the brainchild of Atkins, beginning as just a two page script near the end of 2016.

Goodman joined on after responding to a social media post from Atkins seeking a bad ass, fierce detective.

Engaged by that original treatment and initial meeting with Atkins, Goodman immediately knocked out an additional seventy script pages.

I think my audition was over about 4:30 or 5 PM - and I went home and started writing. And I wasnt done until about 9 AM the next day. I was writing, took a nap for thirty minutes, woke back up, had more ideas and started writing again, Goodman explained. The scripted seventy pages was definitely not a shootable script. But what it was was it was a bunch of ideas that were intriguing and eye opening. And then I kind of helmed the script from there with Ryan.

The original story came from me and it was intended to be a demo reel project. At the time, I was on a break from a previous project and I decided to do that. My hope was that thered be interest in expanding that into a larger project, said Atkins. I had only vague ideas - nothing super specific. We ended up collaborating for a while but I ended up just giving Jennifer the script to run with.

CHICAGO, IL - JANUARY 06: Harry J. Lennix, Brian Barber and Kelli Tidmore on location for 'Conrad' ... [+] a new crime drama that focuses on women empowerment and gender equality on January 6, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)

Shooting took place over fifteen days in the summer of 2019, with a few pick ups last fall, in both Chicago and New York.

In Chicago, filming closed the Wacker Drive bridge downtown at Michigan Avenue. In New York, shoots took place near the Brooklyn Bridge as well as in a shipping container yard which can also be seen in both The Blacklist and The Shawshank Redemption.

We did this kind of backwards. We didnt have a budget and then shoot a show. We shot a show and built the budget as we went along, said Goodman. Because I felt very confident and I really believed that I would make this happen. And I constantly reminded people of that: Dont worry. If we build it, it will happen. Im a firm believer that if you build something, people will come. And they did.

Ultimately, that budget was financed via crowdfunding campaigns and active investors with a keen eye on reigning in spending wherever possible.

A lot of the things that we did with fundraising started with Indiegogo and then asking friends and family and putting in our own money. That didnt get us very far. However, Ryan and I put in a substantial amount of our own time and money - and so did some of the other producers. Because they believed in what we were creating, said Goodman. We were able to get that trailer out and brand our show. We got our social media marketing out and started getting up to about five or six thousand followers - without people having seen the show. And that was exciting. People who were a part of our show, or did locations or helped us with utilizing their home, put in money to our team. There were individuals who were very adamant about what we were creating and wanting their name to be a part of it. So just through networking and my background in sales, Ive been able to utilize my skill set in this environment.

That social media footprint has now doubled on Facebook alone and the Conrad pilot premiered in February at the Davis Theater in Chicago, with stars like Lennix and actor Eric Roberts (Michael Conrad) on hand for interviews and a red carpet reception.

Over the course of the last four years, Conrad has evolved from a two page idea into a fully realized and produced pilot with actual Hollywood star power, a lifespan few planted seeds ever make it through.

With future series story lines fleshed out, and the pitch process officially underway, Goodman is clear about what a learning process the entire experience has been.

First, you cant trust everybody. Youve got to do your research. The biggest thing is to do research, plan wisely, involve the right people and make sure the people that are invested in this are emotionally engaged and invested - that they believe in you and what youre doing and are doing it for the win and success of the show, she said. It cant all be about the money. We want the money - but we want a team of collaborators and creatives that want to see something happen thats unique and different. So, I think the biggest learning experience, I would say, is to be open minded - listen to others, take in feedback and be willing to grow.

CHICAGO, IL - FEBRUARY 1: Harry Lennix, Kelly Tidmore, Jennifer A. Goodman, Eric Roberts and Ryan ... [+] Atkins during the Conrad Series Reboot screening at Davis Theatre on February 1, 2020 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Barry Brecheisen/Getty Images)

With the finish line potentially in sight, regardless of how the pitch process plays out, both Atkins and Goodman are clear on what their unique partnership has meant from the advent of the idea through to today despite the uncertain times.

The collaboration overall has been really fantastic. Shes a wonderful person. She had a lot of different ideas for the character. The story now is several seasons deep. She has endless ideas and is just a source of energy, said Atkins. You never know whos going to like your idea and where an idea might lead you. I had no intention of making this a TV show. It was a two page theme. I couldve never told you that.

Its been a lot of work. Because theres been a lot of challenges. I never really wrote scripts prior to this. But there are few people that Id rather be in business with. He truly offers authenticity. Hes humble. His integrity is in line. We really are honest with each other and we communicate well. In the beginning, it was challenging. Hes really the opposite of me in every sense of the word. But, honestly, hes the yin to my yang when it comes to filmmaking. I think that because were very comfortable and trusting of each other, its a lot easier to be in this process together, said Goodman of the Conrad partnership with Atkins. Were both very well aware that I may not be Kate Conrad. He may not be director of photography. But we also understand that as creators, something weve created will make sure were on top of this and partnered to this as long as we can.

Read this article:
Jennifer Goodman And Ryan Atkins On Maintaining Connection With An Audience Amidst COVID-19 And Guiding Conrad From Pilot To Pitch - Forbes

The crowd is untruth.-Soren Kierkegaaard

The crowd, cautioned Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, is untruth. Nowhere is the concise wisdom of this 19th century warning more plainly apparent than in Donald Trumps despairing United States. Even today, even after so much rancorous presidential dissemblance and chicanery, this fragmenting and unhappy nation too often accepts incoherent political dogma as proper authority and conspicuously vile political gibberish as truth.

Even now, even when a derelict president elevates his own contrived and illiterate judgments concerning epidemiology above the authoritative opinion of Americas distinguished scientists and physicians, millions of his supporters still offer a visceral amen. In essence, these obedient citizens stand in stubbornly open support of untruth or anti-Reason. Why?

How can this unchanging self-destructiveness be suitably explained?

It gets even worse. In certain refractory instances, this irrational hierarchy of US citizen preference has led hundreds (perhaps thousands) of Americans to consume potentially lethal medications against Covid-19. What are these obedient people thinking? This is a president, let us not forget, who thinks human bodies can somehow undergo beneficial anti-viral cleanings with commercially-available disinfectants. If it can kill virus on tabletops, reasons Trump openly, why not take the remediating substance internally?

Credo quia absurdum, affirmed the ancient philosophers. I believe because it is absurd. Still, this is a president of the United States in the year 2020. How can such preposterous reasoning be accepted by literally millions of Americans?

There is more. How shall such normally incomprehensible behaviors be explained more gainfully? At one level, at least, the answer is obvious. America is no longer a society that sincerely values knowledge, education or learning. Led by a retrograde man of commerce who never reads books indeed, who proudly reads nothing at all this has become a know nothing country, a nation that wittingly and shamelessly spurns both intellect and truth.[1] For whatever deeply underlying reasons, docile Trump minions seek to keep themselves anesthetized.

In this active form of complicity with self-destruction, these Americans are not passive victims. Rather, they insistently hold themselves captive by a lengthening string of embarrassingly false presidential reassurances and by clinging to endlessly mindless Trump simplifications of complex problems.[2]

In her magisterial two-volume work, The Life of the Mind (1971), political philosopher Hannah Arendt makes much of the manifest shallowness of historical evil-doers, hypothesizing that the critically underlying causes of harm are not specifically evil motives or common stupidity per se. Rather, she concludes controversially but convincingly, the root problem is thoughtlessness, a more-or-less verifiable human condition that makes a susceptible individual readily subject to the presumed wisdom of clichs, stock phrases and narrowly visceral codes of expression.

There are always a great many who will be susceptible. This does not mean only those who lack a decent formal education. Significantly, in Donald Trumps fragmenting America, just as earlier in the Third Reich, well-educated and affluent persons have joined forces with gun worshippers and street fighters to meet certain presumptively overlapping objectives. In the end, we may learn from both history and logic, each faction will suffer grievously alongside the general citizenry.

Both sides will lose.[3]

For philosopher Hannah Arendt, the core problem is this: a literal absence of thinking. In her learned and lucid assessment, evil is not calculable according to any specific purpose or ideology. Rather, it is deceptively commonplace and altogether predictable. Evil, we may learn from the philosopher, is banal.

There is more. Fundamentally, the mass man or mass woman (a Jungian term[4] that closely resembles Arendts evildoer) who cheers wildly in rancorous presidential crowds, and whatever the articulated gibberish of the moment, favors a constant flow of empty witticisms over any meaningful insights of reasoning or science. Living in a commerce-driven society that has been drifting ever further from any still-residual life of the mind, this susceptible American is a perfect recruit for Trumpian conversion.

This obedient citizen, after all, has absolutely no use for study, evidence or critical thinking of any kind. Why should he? Der Fuhrer will do his thinking for him.[5]

Could anything be more convenient?

With Arendt and Jung, the anti-Reason culprit is unmasked. It is the once-individual human being who has wittingly ceased to be an individual, who has effectively become the unapologetic enemy of intellect and a reliable ally of thoughtlessness. Using the succinct but incomparably expressive words of Spanish philosopher Jose Oretga yGassett, he or she thinks only in his own flesh.[6] Following any such antecedent triumphs of anti-Reason in the United States, it becomes more easy to understand the hideous rise and political survival of dissembling American President Donald J. Trump.

Americas most insidious enemy in this suffocating Trump Era should now be easier to recognize. It is an unphilosophical national spirit that knows nothing and wants to know nothing of truth.[7] Now facing unprecedented and overlapping crises of health, economics and law,[8] sizable elements of We the People feel at their best when they can chant anesthetizing gibberish in mesmerizing chorus. Were number one; were number one,these Americans still shout reflexively, even as their countrys capacity to project global power withers minute by minute, and even as the already ominous separations of rich and poor have come to mimic (and sometimes exceed) what is discoverable in the most downtrodden nations on earth.

Most alarmingly, among these manifold catastrophic American declensions, the badly-wounded American nation is still being led by an utterly ignorant pied piper, by a would-be emperor who was stunningly naked from the start and who has now managed to bring the United States to once unimaginable levels of suffering. In this connection, the Corona Virus pandemic was not of his own personal making, of course, but this relentless plague has become infinitely more injurious under Trumps unsteady dictatorial hand.

Nonetheless, the champions of anti-Reason in America will still generally rise to defend their Fuhrer. He did not create this growing plague, we are reminded. He is, therefore, just another victim of a plausibly unavoidable national circumstance. Why keep picking on this innocent and brilliant man? Instead, let us stand loyally by his inconspicuously sagacious counsel.

Sound familiar?

Recalling philosopher Hannah Arendt, such determinedly twisted loyalties stem originally from massive citizen thoughtlessness. Though Donald Trump is not in any way responsible for the actual biological menace of our current plague, he has still willingly weakened the American nations most indispensable medical and scientific defenses.[9] It is well worth mentioning too, on this particular count, that meaningful national defense always entails more than just large-scale weapons systems and infrastructures.[10] Looking ahead, moreover, this country has far more to gain from a coherent and science-based antivirus policy than from a patently preposterous Trumpian Space Force.[11]

Thomas Jefferson, Chief architect of the Declaration of Independence, earlier observed the imperative congruence of viable national democracy with wisdom and learning. Today, however, many still accept a president whose proud refrain during the 2016 election process was I love the poorly educated. Among other humiliating derelictions, this refrain represented a palpable echo of Third Reich Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels Nuremberg rally comment: Intellect rots the brain.

Americans are polarized not only by race, ethnicity and class, but also by inclination or disinclination to serious thought. For most of this dreary and unhappy country, any inclination toward a life of the mind is anathema. In irrefutable evidence, trivial or debasing entertainments remain the only expected compensation for a shallow national life of tedious obligation, financial exhaustion and premature death. This sizable portion of the populace, now kept distant from authentic personal growth by every imaginable social and economic obstacle, desperately seeks residual compensations, whether in silly slogans, status-bearing affiliations or the manifestly deranging promises of Trump Era politics.

Even at this eleventh hour, Americans must learn understand that no nation can be first[12] that does not hold the individual soul[13] sacred. At one time in our collective history, after American Transcendental philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau, a spirit of personal accomplishment did actually earn high marks. Then, young people especially, strove to rise interestingly, not as the embarrassingly obedient servants of destructive power and raw commerce, but as plausibly proud owners of a unique and personal Self.

Alas, today this Self lives together with increasingly unbearable material and biologically uncertain ties. Whether Americans would prefer to become more secular or more reverent, to grant government more authority over their lives, or less, a willing submission to multitudes has become the nations most unifying national religion. Regarding the pied piper in the White House, many Americans accept even the most patently preposterous Trump claims of enhanced national security. Credo quia absurdum.

Upon returning to Washington DC after the Singapore Summit, President Trump made the following statement: Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea.[14]

Its not just America. Crowd-like sentiments like these have a long and diversified planetary history. We are, to be fair, hardly the first people to surrender to crowds. The contemporary crowd-man or woman is, in fact, a primitive and universal being, one who has uniformly slipped back, in the words of Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset, through the wings, on to the age-old stage of civilization.

This grotesque stage is not bare. It is littered with the corpses of dead civilizations.[15] Indiscriminately, the crowd defiles all that is most gracious and still-promising in society. Charles Dickens, during his first visit to America, already observed back in 1842: I do fear that the heaviest blow ever dealt at liberty will be dealt by this country in the failure of its example to the earth.

To this point, at least, Americans have successfully maintained their political freedom from traditional political tyranny and oppression, but plainly this could now change at almost any moment. Already, we have come to accept in once unimaginable terms the kind of presidential manipulation and bullying that can shred and pull apart well-established constitutions. As corollary, Americans have also cravenly surrendered their liberty to become authentic persons. Openly deploring a life of meaning and sincerity, a nation stubbornly confuses wealth with success, blurting out rhythmic chants of patriotic celebration even as their cheerless democracy vanishes into meaninglessness, pandemic disease and a plausibly irremediable despair.

Whatever its origin, there is an identifiable reason lying behind this synchronized delirium. In part, at least, such orchestrated babble seeks to protect Americans from a potentially terrifying and unbearable loneliness. In the end, however, it is a contrived and inevitably lethal remedy . In the end, it offers just another Final Solution.

Still, there remain individual American citizens of integrity and courage. The fearlessly resolute individual who actively seeks an escape from the steadily-poisoning crowd, the One who opts heroically for disciplined individual thought over effortless conformance, must feel quite deeply alone. The most radical division, asserted Jos Ortega y Gasset in 1930, is that which splits humanity. those who make great demands on themselvesand those who demand nothing special of themselves In 1965, the Jewish philosopher, Abraham Joshua Heschel, offered an almost identical argument. Lamenting, The emancipated man is yet to emerge, Heschel then asked each One to inquire: What is expected of me? What is demanded of me?

Why are these same questions so casually pushed aside by current American supporters of a rancorous president who opposes emancipation in any conceivable form?

There is more. It is time for camouflage and concealment in our pitiful American crowd to yield to what Abraham Joshua Heschel called being-challenged-in-the-world. Individuals who would dare to read books for more than transient entertainment, and who are willing to risk social and material disapproval in exchange for exiting the crowd (emancipation), offer America its only real and lasting hope. To be sure, these rare souls can seldom be found in politics, in universities, in corporate boardrooms or almost anywhere (there are some exceptions still) on radio, television or in the movies. Always, their critical inner strength lies not in pompous oratory, catchy crowd phrases, or observably ostentatious accumulations of personal wealth (Trump. Trump, Trump), but in the considerably more ample powers of genuineness, thought and Reason.

There is much yet to learn. Currently, not even the flimsiest ghost of intellectual originality haunts Americas public discussions of politics and economics, even those organized by intelligent and well-meaning Trump opponents. Now that Americas largely self-deceiving citizenry has lost all residual sense of awe in the world, this national public not only avoids authenticity, it positively loathes it. Indeed, in a nation that has lost all recognizable regard for the Western literary canon, our American crowdsgenerally seek aid, comfort and fraternity in a conveniently shared public illiteracy.

Inter alia, the classical division of American society into Few and Mass represents a useful separation of those who are imitators from those who could initiate real understanding. The mass, said Jose Ortega y Gasset, crushes beneath it everything that is different, everything that is excellent, individual, qualified and select. Today, in foolish and prospectively fatal deference to this Mass, the intellectually un-ambitious American not only wallows lazily in nonsensical political and cultural phrases of a naked emperor, he or she also applauds a manifestly shallow national ethos of personal surrender.

America First, yes, but only in Covid-19 mortality.

By definition, the Mass, or Crowd, can never become Few. Yet, someindividual members of the Mass can make the very difficult transformation. Those who are already part of the Few must announce and maintain their determined stance. One must become accustomed to living on mountains, says Nietzsche, to seeing the wretched ephemeral chatter of politics and national egotism beneath one. It was Nietzsche, too, in Zarathustra, who warned presciently: Never seek the Higher Man at the marketplace.

Aware that they may still comprise a core barrier to Americas spiritual, cultural, intellectual and political disintegration, the Few, resolute opponents of the Crowd, knowingly refuse to chant in chorus. Ultimately, they should remind us of something very important: It is that both individually and collectively, doggedly staying the course of self-actualization and self-renewal a lonely course of lucid consciousness rather than self-inflicted delusion is the only honest and purposeful option for an imperiled nation.

Today, unhindered in their endlessly misguided work, Trump Era cheerleaders in all walks of life draw feverishly upon the sovereignty of an unqualified Crowd. This Mass depends for its very breath of life on the relentless withering of personal dignity, and also on the continued servitude of all independent citizen consciousness. Oddly, We the people, frightfully unaware of this dangerous parasitism, are being passively converted into the fuel for the omnivorous machine of Trumpian democracy. This is a pathologic system of governance in which the American citizenry is still permitted to speak and interact freely, but which is also an anti-intellectual plutocracy.

In the early 1950s, Karl Jaspers, well familiar with the seminal earlier writings of Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, sought to explain what a dissembling Crowd had brought to his native Germany and Germanys captive nations. Publishing Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time in 1952, the distinguished German philosopher explained the formidable difficulties of sustaining Reason among many who would prefer the fog of the irrational. Now, Jaspers earlier observations about Nazi Germany may apply equally well to Donald Trumps dissembling America:

Reason is confronted again and again with the fact of a mass of believers who have lost all ability to listen, who can absorb no argument and who hold unshakably fast to the Absurd as an unassailable presupposition.

Here, in essence, Jaspers here underscores the fraudulent freedom of obedience in any society that might seemingly will itself to be a democracy, but is actually just an oblique celebration of tyranny, moreover, the singularly arch-tyranny of anti-Reason. In earlier times, such perverse celebrations were unexceptional or even de rigeur, but they also set the stage for what Americans are experiencing so painfully at the present moment. To some extent, at least, for America to be freed from the false freedom of obedience will demand the whole society be placed in status nascens, as if newly born.

, When, in 1633, Galileo Galilei kneeled before the Inquisitorial Tribunal of Rome and was forced to renounce the compelling science of Copernicus, he revealed the vulnerability of Reason to the mortal seductions of anti-Reason. In this case, history deserves notable pride of place. When Americans watch the evening news depicting US President Donald Trump railing thoughtlessly against well-established theories of biology and medical science, they should finally begin to appreciate something utterly primal. Such flagrant seductions of anti-Reason are not only sinister, but also lethal.

The crowd is untruth.

[1] In this regard, consider the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsches succinct warning in Zarathusrtra: Never seek the higher man at the marketplace.

[2] One may be usefully reminded of Bertrand Russells trenchant observation in Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916): Men fear thought more than they fear anything else on earth more than ruin, more even than death.

[3] Said Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels in 1934: Whoever can conquer the street will one day conquer the state. Later, in 2019, Donald Trump echoed this dreadful sentiment: I have the support of the street, of the police, of the military, the support of Bikers for Trump. I have the tough people, but they dont play it tough until they go to a certain point and then it would be very bad, very bad. In a similar vein, during a 2016 rally in Las Vegas, Trump told a wildly cheering crowd that hed like to punch the protestors in the face. I love the old days, you know what they used to do to guys like that when theyre in a place like this, theyd be carried out on a stretcher, Then, identifying a specific target person in the audience, Trump added: Id like to punch him in the face.

[4] See the pertinent writings of Swiss psychologist Carl G. Jung, especially The Undiscovered Self (1957).

[5] A current example is flag-waving Trump supporters who hold signs blaming distinguished epidemiologist Dr. Anthony Fauci for tyrannical closure policies, and simultaneously urging greater medical authority for President Donald J Trump.

[6] The mass-man, we were warned earlier by Ortega in The Revolt of the Masses (1930) has no attention to spare for reasoning; he learns only in his own flesh. Nothing could be more conspicuously clarifying than this graphic metaphor.

[7] Apropos of truth in Platos The Republic: To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.

[8] See, by this author, Louis Ren Beres: https://www.jurist.org/commentary/2020/04/the-trump-presidency-a-breathtaking-assault-on-law-justice-and-security/

[9] This virus is going to disappear, said Trump, on February 27th, 2020.

[10] On this matter, of course, one ought also note this presidents withdrawal from treaties with Russia and from the United Nations World Health Organization. Credo quia absurdum.

[11] The United States Space Force was created by US President Donald Trump on December 20, 2019, under terms of the National Defense Authorization Act. Although it is intended to bolster this countrys overall military power in any expanding strategic competition with Russia, its most likely effects will be contractive, corrosive and destabilizing. The critical underlying US policy error being committed in this creation is conceptual and historic. In essence, it consists of failing to recognize that millennia of belligerent geopolitical competitions have resulted not in peace, but in assorted forms of international war. At a unique time when the United States faces a new and unpredictable set of dangers from worldwide disease pandemic, shifting large sums of money needed for public health to a space-centered arena of future international conflict represents mistaken national priorities. Of course, from what we ought already have learned about Reason and Anti-Reason, before this miscalculation can be changed, Americas leaders will have to appreciate the fundamentally intellectual antecedents of US foreign policy decision-making at every level.

[12] This presidents self-serving refrain of America First ignores an absolutely overarching empirical truth: America is first in Covid-19 deaths, but not in any other tangibly enviable standard of civilizational quality or improvement. Always, we have the biggest bombs and missiles, but little else to show for even the most basic expectations of human empathy and compassion. For this president and his retrograde followers, caring about others is a sign of weakness. Nothing else. To wit, in the presidents currently most evident example, wearing a mask against Covid-19 infection is described as little more than political correctness.

[13] Both Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung thought of soul (in German, Seele) as the very essence of a human being. Neither Freud nor Jung ever provides a precise definition of the term, but it was not intended by either in any ordinary religious sense. For both psychologists, it was a still-recognizable and critical seat of both mind and passions in this life. Interesting, too, in the present context, is that Freud explained his already-predicted decline of America by various express references to soul. Freud was disgusted by any civilization so apparently unmoved by considerations of true consciousness (e.g., awareness of intellect and literature), and even thought that the anti-intellectual American commitment to perpetually shallow optimism and to crudely material accomplishment would occasion sweeping psychological misery.

[14] The worst expression of such incoherent presidential reassurance would likely be a nuclear war. For authoritative early accounts by this author of nuclear war effects, see: Louis Ren Beres, Apocalypse: Nuclear Catastrophe in World Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980); Louis Ren Beres, Mimicking Sisyphus: Americas Countervailing Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1983); Louis Ren Beres, Reason and Realpolitik: U.S. Foreign Policy and World Order (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1984); and Louis Ren Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israels Nuclear Strategy (Lexington, Mass., Lexington Books, 1986). Most recently, by Professor Beres, see: Surviving Amid Chaos: Israels Nuclear Strategy (New York, Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed. 2018).

[15] Dostoyevsky reminds us soberly: And what is it in us that is mellowed by civilization? All it does, Id say, is to develop in man a capacity to feel a greater variety of sensations. And nothing, absolutely nothing else. And through this development, man will yet learn how to enjoy bloodshed. Why, it has already happened.Civilization has made man, if not always more bloodthirsty, at least more viciously, more horribly bloodthirsty. (See Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes From Underground, 108 (Andrew R. Mac Andrew, tr., New American Library, 1961 (1862).

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Donald Trump, "The Crowd" And A Nation's Bitter Despair - Modern Diplomacy

Regarding Michael A. Wolffs guest column Should Missouri kill Walter Barton? (May 18): In the case of Walter Barton, there were two mistrials, a trial and conviction, a reversal and remand by the Missouri Supreme Court. The second trial ended in conviction and was upheld by the Supreme Court but later thrown out by a lower court. At the fifth trial, Barton was found guilty, and the death penalty was recommended. During final appeal, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled 4 to 3 to uphold his death sentence.

On Feb. 19, the state of Missouri set the execution for May 19. A petition, which was signed by more than 5,800 people, asked Gov. Mike Parson to grant clemency. The clemency appeal was based on an innocence claim and lack of competence.

Michael A. Wolff, retired Missouri Supreme Court justice who voted against the conviction and death sentence, wrote: Even if the evidence were strong enough to support a conviction, it may not have been enough to warrant the death penalty.

In the end it was up to Parson. He was asked to stay the execution and appoint a board of inquiry to investigate. He chose to take no action, seeing no reason to intervene. Barton was executed last week by a lethal drug.

I am horrified, angered and saddened to live in a state and a country that condones and promotes the killing of a human being who may not have been guilty. This is indeed cruel and unusual punishment.

Lucy Freeman St. Louis

The rest is here:
Top letters: Contempt for law, Trump on the Titanic, execution was 'cruel and unusual' - STLtoday.com

May 29, 2020 6:00AM ET

Up Close is Sourcing Journals regular check-in with industry executives to get their take on topics ranging from personal style to their companys latest moves. In this Q&A, Angelique Bohbot, creative director for denim label NYDJ, discusses the era that speaks to her the most and why the next generation makes her hopeful for the future.

Angelique Bohbot, creative director at NYDJ

Name: Angelique Bohbot

Title: creative director

Company: NYDJ

Which industry, besides fashion, has the best handle on the supply chain?

The food industry has had a great handle on the supply chain. The food industry has grown the most across all channels and in partnerships. Anything at any time is at the tips of your fingers.

Do you consider yourself a typical consumer?

Yes, I stay on top of all the new fashion trends in the marketplace and online.

As a consumer, what does it take to win your loyalty?

As a consumer, it takes consistency, quality and a brand that is able to evolve organically over time.

Whats your typical work or weekend uniform?

Classic: jeans and a T-shirt.

Which fashion era is your favorite?

1950s.

Whos your style icon?

Coco Chanel and Yves Saint Laurent.

Whats the best decision your company has made in the last year?

The opportunity to refresh the look of the brand.

How would you describe your corporate culture?

The company culture at NYDJ has a strong sense of female empowerment.

What should be the apparel industrys top priority now?

The apparel industry needs to focus on the impact it is having on the environment and how the industry as a whole can make positive changes.

What keeps you up at night?

Pretty much nothing, except days I have deadlines.

What makes you most optimistic?

My kids. I believe the new generations are thoughtful and are doing more to take care of the planet. That keeps me optimistic and hopeful.

Tell us about your companys latest product introduction:

Im excited about our new Summer collection that will be launching shortly. Its bright, fun, and we have some great imagery that really brings the products to life. Its something to look forward towhich is what we all need right about now!

See more here:
Up Close: In Conversation with NYDJ's Angelique Bohbot - Sourcing Journal

Artist Ani Liu in her studio. Credit: Daniel Peterschmidt

In 2015, artist Ani Liu heard two sentences that changed her entire approach to art: Digital is dead. Bio is the new digital. Those words, spoken at a welcome talk on her first day as a grad student at the MIT Media Lab, triggered panic at first. I was like, oh shit, I dont know anything about biology, Liu says.

But today, biology is the starting point for most of Lius work. Her feminist artworks are visceral, thought-provoking, and anchored in biotechnology. I like to say that I have a research-based practice, Liu says. Each of the artworks I make are usually centered around a specific topic that I do a deep dive of research into.

Her body of work is executed through experimentation: Shes used organic chemistry to concoct perfumes that smell like people emotionally close to her; shes programmed a knitting machine to produce a a garment workers brain signals; shes engineered a device that enables the wearer to control the direction of swimming sperm with their mind.

The throughline of her work is speculative design, an approach to art and design that critiques larger societal issues. Speculative design isnt about predicting the future, Liu clarifies. Its different ways of considering the future, and hopefully, theyre actionable. But for me, its the importance of letting things outside of capitalism drive progress.

Her pieces provide a moment to pause. One of the things that I find so important about speculative design is that it allows people to reflect on the implications of the technologies that we consume, instead of kind of blindly going along with it, Liu says. I feel like it forces us to unpack what is going on.

Credit: Daniel Peterschmidt

Lius workspace in Long Island City, New York has more in common with a scientific lab than it does a traditional art studio. Jars of organic matter, electrodes, and machines are strewn across her desk and shelves. Tucked in one corner, a tank filled with circuits and electrodes sits leftover from her Real Virtual Feelingsproject.

Liu points to a two-foot-tall clear tube of stringy, sinew suspended in a pus-like liquid. She wanted to create an iteration of a self-portrait, based on the materials in her body. She even worked with a radiologist who helped her take scans of her body to figure out the percentages of water, fats, and different kinds of proteins, to try to show a portrait of myself as a kind of stratified tube of goop, she explains. But, she found the organic soup wasnt very stable. Some of the prototypes I would make would start to [let] off gas, they werent sterile. Sometimes they would explode, she laughs.

Like the explosive mixture of those early prototypes, Liu didnt mix well with science and math at first. At some point early on, an authority figure told me that girls are bad at math, she says. And it really sunk deep into me. For most of my life, I felt so intimidated by laboratories and science and technology.

That changed when she decided to approach art with materials that required math, science, and technology. I was like, oh, Im not that bad at circuit making, or this isnt actually outside my realm of possibility. It wasnt until I used it as a secondary tool that it really felt natural.

After attending Dartmouth College and Harvard University, Liu dove headfirst into biology-infused art at the MIT Media Lab. She transformed her dorm room into a mini-lab space, purchasing distillation equipment, glassware, an incubator, and microscope on eBay. She also worked out a deal with some professors to get access to labs at night when they werent in use, so she could try out personal experiments, like genetically altering a plants smell into a human scent.

Smell intrigued Liu so much that she created multiple perfumes that smelled like her husbanda kind of scent portrait made from intimate and heated moments, like after a fight or showering, or before saying goodbye.

When you paint a portrait of someone, theres not just one reality of how someone looks or appears, she says. So I wanted to make many layers of portraits of him.

Liu compared the process of creating the piece to being a forensic scientist. Youre like a detective. You have the evidence and then you have to go backwards. Since they were long distance, Liu gave her husband special bags to send his dirty, stinky shirts so she could begin the distillation process. She ran them through a gas chromatography-mass spectrometry machine to identify some of the chemicals that were coming from the shirt. Then, she would apply different solvents, like chloroform and ethanol, to capture the most volatile organic compoundsthe signature molecules responsible for the smell.

Those little chemical portraits resulted in three different perfumes of her husband. I personally deeply think [it smelled like him], she says. But smell is super subjective. My husband thinks it smells like his brothers. And his brothers think that it smells like him, which is to say that smells really bad, she laughs.

Human perfume bottles. Credit: Ani Liu

Since then, Liu dove into other fields for inspiration. A few years ago, she learned that two researchers from Stanford programmed a chip with a paramecium on top, and used it to play Pong. Since paramecium are susceptible to an electric field, the researchers were able to control their movement and hit the games Pong ball in a desired direction by changing which way the field was flowing. My whole mind exploded because I thought it was so interesting, Liu says. It was like a lightning bolt hit me in the class, because I was like, What if that thing was a sperm instead?

Sperm are also susceptible to an electric field, and Liu thought similar techniques from the Stanford study could also be used on them for an art piece.

After some research, Liu found an EEG device that could be trained to recognize specific patterns of brain signals. For example, if the wearer repeatedly thinks left, left, left, the EEG can assign those left brain signal patterns to a certain action, like moving an object left. In this case, that object was sperm. It was fairly simple, she says. I created a little circuit on a glass slide. And it created an electric field where I would switch the polarity back and forth. And they would swim towards it.

Originally, Liu wanted the commanding brain signals to be related to complex concepts; thinking of free will would orient the sperm left or female empowerment would turn it right, for example. But that ended up being too abstract for the EEG machine to learn quickly and too difficult to get consistent results from person to person. She settled on attention, relaxation, and other signals that are easy and quick to train.

Beyond the technical feat of the project, the piece touches on something greater. What if a woman was controlling it? And what does this mean symbolically and metaphorically as a performance? By allowing female participants to physically control sperm, the piece allows them to control an aspect of male bodiesa flip on the generations of societys control over female bodies, such as the regulation of contraceptives and genital mutilation.

All of Lius art explores the human nature of discoverythe jubilations and pitfalls. In order to do high-level work in a laboratory, you have to be very intensely focused. Like, Ive met some individuals that have spent most of their life investigating several molecules, she says. But I think we should demand it of our researchers to do a deep dive and then zoom out, a back and forth. And I feel like thats what I do all the time.

The door in Liu's studio. Credit: Daniel Peterschmidt

Its that zooming in and out that has led Liu to classify her designs as speculative realism, similar to how Margaret Atwood describes her writing as speculative fiction, as opposed to science fiction. Some amazing sci-fi and a lot of art can prime what you think reality should or could be, she says. For example, robots portrayed in movies and TV, such as the nanny robot Rosie in The Jetsons and the murderous robot in The Terminator, pigeon-holed humans relationships to robots, Liu says, and over time, fiction can influence reality. She points out how today we have female-voiced AI assistants, which imply an outdated gender stereotype of nurturing, an unconscious callback to Rosie.

Slowly over time, I think it can really impact reality. That relationship between speculation and reality, I think its very important, she says. Theres a lot of room for interpretation and [many directions] that the research or technology development can go.

I think we should demand it of our researchers to do a deep dive and then zoom out, a back and forth. And I feel like thats what I do all the time.

And having an array of perspectives can help more people connect with complex aspects of research.

A big part of the importance of speculation is allowing multiple voices into the conversation. Because whats better for me or whats better for my daughter or whats better for someone living on a reservation might be very different, Liu says. So, I think that theres a really important seat at the table for artists and designers.

Liu hopes that her speculative work loops back around to the scientists who inspired it in the first placewidening the view on research. I hope that they consume these types of media and artworks so that they really think about the non-intended, secondary implications of these technologies, she says. It is my near and dear hope and dream that it will cause whoever views itscientists and owners of big corporate technology institutionsto really think about what is happening.

Ani Liu. Credit: Daniel Peterschmidt

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Daniel Peterschmidt

Daniel Peterschmidt is a digital producer and composes music for Science Fridays podcasts, including Science Diction and Undiscovered. Their D&D character is a clumsy bard named Chip Chap Chopman.

Continued here:
This Biotech Artist Wants Scientists To Think About Their Creations - Science Friday

American writer and activist Dhoruba Bin Wahad was falsely imprisoned for 19 years. His essay on the national oppression of black people remains deeply relevant today.

By: Dhoruba Bin Wahad | May 30

In 1971, Dhoruba Bin Wahad was accused of murdering two officers while still in his teens and imprisoned for 19 years. Bin Wahad always maintained his innocence and won his freedom by forcing the FBI to release thousands of classified documents proving that he had been framed. The justice department eventually rescinded Bin Wahads conviction and he was released in 1990. The essay that follows was published three years later in Still Black, Still Strong: Survivors of the U.S. War Against Black Revolutionaries; it remains deeply relevant today.

Conventional wisdom holds that peaceful and non-violent change is in the ultimate best interest of a social system. Seldom is the use of force seen as socially productive. By and large this is true. Regardless of the causes, very few civilizations have survived cataclysmic violent internal upheavals, or the long-term decay of their institutions of social control (which amounts to the same thing, for institutional decay results in unreasonable resort to force and repression, thereby causing violent social reaction). If a society thrives through peaceful change, then the exercise of power must be perceived as just or at least indicative of a common moral identity. No status-quo power can long maintain itself without some claim to moral integrity unless it does so by use of naked force, and history illustrates that force alone is insufficient to maintain and hold power.

When we rethink the concept of self-defense against racist aggression we are also reevaluating the ethical grounds for the use of force in a particular social context. Any concept of legal force is determined by the prevailing ideas of those who govern the use of violence.

In U.S. society these prevailing ideas are erected upon the notion of white-skin privilege, that is, of European superiority. This notion holds that a white persons life is somehow intrinsically worth more than the life of a person of color. This, of course, has played itself out in history. The genocide of Native Americans, the establishment of the African slave trade, and the subsequent era of European colonialism all testify to the fact that white-skin privilege ideologically justified the use of violence in pursuit of European profit and control over people of color. This is the context in which Black people must discuss the idea of self-defense. No rational discussion of self-defense for Black people can proceed without at least this basic understanding.

Perhaps it would be useful to further examine the relationship of force to the American national character, and how this relationship has been institutionalized. Very few people can argue, with any credibility, that the establishment of the United States was a non-violent historical episode. The seizure of the North American landmass from its native population was a decidedly genocidal undertaking. The consistency of this enterprise over such a long period of time over 250 years refutes any notion that European racism was merely the aberration of a particular era. The use of African chattel slave labor to establish the foundation for the great North American economic and industrial miracle was steeped in ruthless cruelty and maintained by the omnipresent threat of violence.

When we witness the countless incidents of racist police brutality and murder that are an everyday feature of the Black experience in the U.S., it is evident that there is a double standard when it comes to the use of violence: one standard for Europeans and another for people of color.

It is estimated by some historians that over 20 million Native Americans were killed by European settlers of the Western hemisphere between the 15th and 19th centuries, and that over 50 million Africans died in the middle passage between Africa and the Americas in the period between the 16th and 19th centuries. In the early 20th century, the projection of U.S. power into Central America, the Caribbean and elsewhere proceeded in the wake of gunboats or relied upon the bayonets of U.S. Marines. Indeed, the U.S. has invaded Central America over two dozen times in the last century, and has annexed territories it seized from other European colonial powers defeated in just wars.

In the words of a 1960s activist, violence is as American as apple pie. Force and violence are part of the American male folk wisdom that socializes generations of white males into macho notions of aggression toward people of color. One small example of this is the cliche that the West was won by the six-shooter. Indeed, the sanctimonious glorification of equality based upon force could be summed up in a play on the words of the U.S. Declaration of Independence which states that all men are created equal. A popular saying on the 19th-century frontier was that God may have created men, but Sam Colt made em equal, Sam Colt, of course, being the renowned American gun-maker and founder of Colt Firearms Corporation. Flowing out of the notions of white-skin privilege and the white-male frontier mentality is the subconscious presumption (now normative for white American cultural ethics) that all Europeans have a moral right, even a responsibility, to use force whenever their position is threatened, and that people of color have no equivalent moral right to defend themselves from European aggression especially when the aggression is cloaked under the name of law and order or U.S. national interest.

When we witness the countless incidents of racist police brutality and murder that are an everyday feature of the Black experience in the U.S., or the use of U.S. military force in Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama and the Persian Gulf, it is evident that there is a double standard when it comes to the use of violence: one standard for Europeans and another for people of color. It has been said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Perhaps it can be said as well that racism is the first refuge of the insecure. Racism, having exercised considerable influence in the development of western nation states, has built into these states this dual standard of humanity, which is so ingrained that it is often taken for granted. As a consequence, freedom for the national racial minority, as a whole, often requires the radical disruption of the social status quo and a complete reevaluation of the dominant values and norms. It is little wonder therefore that the demand for human rights by the victims of racist subjugation is always perceived by the dominant culture as unreasonable and threatening. Nowhere is this better illustrated than around the issue of force, as it relates to self-defense against racist violence.

In the United States, poor people and especially African Americans are universally encouraged to pursue non-violence in their struggle for human rights. It is argued on the one hand that violence per se is unproductive and only begets more violence, and, on the other hand, that you cant win any way. You of course being the poor person of a darker hue. Subsidized by liberal foundation grants, institutions exist to train the poor in non-violent attitudes and actions. The main stream media, decidedly male and white, while bombarding the populace with esoteric violence in the form of cop shows and Rambo movies, send the subliminal message to the white male population that the use of force and violence by underclass African-American and Third World peoples is by its very nature either criminal or morally suspect. African-American history is rewritten to emphasize the non-violent struggle for human and civil rights, while equally heroic but violent examples of struggle are pigeon-holed and dismissed.

Even the history of non-violent activism in the African-American struggle for equality is presented in a sterile light. The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. is consistently portrayed by the mainstream white media and in American history books as a toothless moral dreamer who essentially endorsed the proposition of the American capitalist state and its support of reactionary movements around the world. Of course nothing is further from the truth. Clearly, non-violence as preached by the mainstream media to Black Americans and the poor is never put forward as a tactic, but as a goal in itself.

While the disenfranchised Black community is fed the psychological pablum of non-violence, the enfranchised majority white community trains its children in the use of force in its war colleges and police paramilitary institutions. Moreover, Eurocentric American nationalism provides the mass culture with a moral and ethical framework in which to act out the violent impulses of their institutional training. The tradition of conservatism and the right are fundamental standards by which all other perceptions and views are measured. Thus an unfair imbalance is achieved between the benefactors of a racist society and its underclass. Indeed, the so-called liberal American tradition operates within this race- and class-bound imbalance, which is one reason why the so-called two-party (Democrat-Republican) body politic and the principle of separate branches of government are bankrupt, and never prevented U.S. intervention in the Third World, e.g., Korea, the Congo, Vietnam, Grenada, Angola, the Middle East, Libya and Central America, and it never secured for African-Americans equal and fair treatment under existent law.

While the disenfranchised Black community is fed the psychological pablum of non-violence, the enfranchised majority white community trains its children in the use of force in its war colleges and police paramilitary institutions.

The obvious consequence of a dual standard of human expectation is a unique system of democratic fascism and a permanent condition of police or military repression aimed at the underclass and social dissidents. Limited political democracy is permitted while corporate control of the economy dictates the real content and direction of the state. In this context the specter of racist subjugation resolves itself in an ongoing and continuous cycle of police repression, underclass crime and social deprivation-in other words a permanent state of crisis.

The highest expression of this system of democratic fascism appears to be the National Security State, or NSS. This Orwellian corporate government structure has developed both as a corporate political manager of, and a reaction to, the condition of permanent domestic social crisis and an insurgent post-colonial Third World. The American NSS, as an institution, sponsors and sanctions racist violence of law enforcement at home and euphemistic low-intensity conflict in the Third World. In terms of its breadth of organization and its management of violence as an instrument of policy, the NSS is the ultimate purveyor of force on the face of the earth.

The bureaucracy and technocrats of the NSS serve the transnational interests of corporate America. It derives its strength and power from control of technology, a huge military-police apparatus, and its capacity to control the primary sources of information. Because the NSS sees itself as preserving the American way of life,. i.e. status quo power, it views its own citizens as subversive to national security whenever they disagree with the police or the interests of the NSS. Consequently law enforcement takes on a decidedly political function. Behind criminal law enforcement lurk the political police whose job it is to contain the unruly, quiet the outspoken, and destroy the dreamers of a new order.

Behind criminal law enforcement lurk the political police whose job it is to contain the unruly, quiet the outspoken, and destroy the dreamers of a new order.

Effective mass organization of people against racist/class inequality, against high minority unemployment, against socio-economic dislocation (homelessness), or for the redistribution of wealth, reorganization of national priorities, and social control of technology, is always seen by the NSS as disruptive of the status quo. For this basic reason, essentially moral and economic issues such as street crime, drug abuse, criminal justice, or the African-American underclass are political campaign issues gratuitously used to manufacture an ill informed public consensus which endorses democratic repression of dissent and of the disenfranchised, as the Willie Horton issue was used by the racist right during the 1988 presidential campaign. An accurate assessment of the use of violence against minorities in a racist culture would be very difficult if African-Americans did not take a serious look at the nature of the National Security State.

Covert Action Information Bulletin (CAIB), a Washington, D.C. based non-profit civilian watchdog organization, recently reported the existence of the little-known State Defense Forces (SDFs) being created throughout America. According to CAIB, these State Defense Forces (a generic term) have been organized in approximately 24 states as auxiliaries to the already legally constituted state National Guard. It is presumed that a domestic SDF will be needed to control dissent and civil unrest in the event of a national emergency arising out of an unpopular U.S. military invasion abroad in which the National Guard is federalized and sent overseas. Recruits for the SDFs are unpaid civilians, and though it appears that anyone can join the SDF, its ranks are at present filled by zealots of the political right.

This is significant, especially for African-Americans who are considered by the NSS to be an acute threat to Americas domestic security by virtue of the justice of their grievances. It should come as little surprise to know that the SDF cadres are being trained in urban riot and crowd control, and in the use of weapons such as shotguns, M-16s, M-60s and 45-caliberpistols, as well as in various police techniques of anti-insurgency. While African-Americans are being taught, trained and indoctrinated into a non-violent frame of mind, the whiteAmerican National Security State is teaching, training and indoctrinating its adherents to employ lethal force in suppression of dissent and protest. This is not a coincidence. The violent mentality of the racist status quo and the white fear of Black America are almost symbiotic in nature. This seeming symbiosis has as its objective the denigration of the political option of self-defense for people of color, and the criminalization of the advocacy of such options. Thus, people of color are encouraged to rely on the very system of violence that subjugates them.

The violent mentality of the racist status quo and the white fear of Black America are almost symbiotic in nature.

In January of 1989, Don Jackson, a Black police officer on leave from the Hawthorne, California police department drove through predominantly white Long Beach, California on a personal fact-finding mission. He was investigating reports of racist police harassment. Mr. Jackson was shadowed during his drive by an unmarked KNBC-TV van. What happened to Mr. Jackson was nationally televised in graphic detail: he was stopped arbitrarily by policemen from Long Beach, one of whom slammed his head through a plate-glass window to impress upon him exactly who was boss. Mr. Jackson wrote in a January 23rd New York Times op-ed article, Police Embody Racism to My People, that police brutality inflicted on Black people has a greater historical function than mere gratuitous violence:

The black American finds that the most prominent reminder of his second-class citizenship is the police. In the history of this country, police powers were collectively shared among whites regarding black people. A slave wandering off the plantation could be stopped and detained by any white person who saw fit to question his purpose for being away from home A variety of stringent laws were enacted and enforced to stamp the imprint of inequality on the black American. It has long been the role of the police to see that the plantation mentality is passed from one generation of blacks to another. No one has enforced these rules with more zeal than the police. (emphasis added)

The irony of Mr. Jacksons assessment is that the collectively shared police powers of whites has given way to a collectively shared perception of Black people as potential criminals and terrorists. Indeed, even Mr. Jacksons effort to expose the truth fell victim to the need for white society to obscure it. The dramatic racist police mistreatment of Mr. Jackson was juxtaposed on national news broadcasts next to Black people looting white and immigrant Hispanic-owned stores in Miami. The white media, as if by reflex, played to the dual realities of a racist culture. Surely white America got the message that the police have their hands full dealing with potentially volatile Blacks, and that if they are somewhat aggressive, who can really blame them? At the same time, Blacks were made to feel as if their truth was being told. The duality of historical experiences one Black, one white whatever the facts, makes democratic consensus without equal power impossible.

Equal power? What does this mean for African Americans? Perhaps we would do well to reevaluate our idea of what equality means, for if we are of the notion that individual freedom in a racist culture can be acquired at the expense of the collective freedom of the victims of that culture, then we have accepted the amoral concept of equal opportunity exploitation, the very same concept that enslaved our ancestors and which divides the world today into two antagonistic divisions of haves and have nots, exploited and exploiter. Malcolm X once said, history is the best subject to reward all research. There is no way we can judge the relationship between African-Americans and European-Americans under imagined conditions of equal power, that is, absent our history of subjugation, absent the consequences of chattel enslavement driven by profit incentive, or regardless of the elaborate edifice of legal and social discrimination erected to maintain African-Americans in a purely minority status in which their interests are subsumed by the interest of the dominant caste and class.

The common humanity of both African-Americans and whites has had to endure and suffer the predatory appetite of a system devised to enrich the few at the expense of the many.

The common humanity of both African-Americans and whites has had to endure and suffer the predatory appetite of a system devised to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Whatever episodic sparks of humanity that the races may have exhibited toward each other surely occurred despite the European nation-state system-not because of it. The struggle for Black empowerment can ill afford to ignore history. There is no power without the capacity for independent self-defense.

Whenever the question of Black self-defense arises, it inevitably stumbles over the issues of legality and appropriateness of violence (which all too often amount to the same thing, that is, violence is always considered appropriate if and only if it is legal). This is because self-defense against racist attacks is generally viewed in a very narrow fashion which is unjustified by our experience as a people. To combat this, in the first place, the idea of the use of force to defend oneself has to be stripped of racist duality. Secondly, we have to understand the function of force as the European power elite perceive it, and third, we must evaluate the utility of a newly derived definition of self-defense in assuring collective survival.

Should we examine Mr. Jacksons historical assessment of police violence we would see that it is the same as the organization of racist terrorism. Violence was historically used in conjunction with other psychological factors to dehumanize the African slaves and secure their system of servitude. For the men who controlled this system, slave control was not only an economic consideration but a matter of physical self-defense as well. The fears of Native Americans and of African slave revolt were two permanent features of early European-American colonial life. In 1710, the governor of Virginia, Alexander Spotswood, advised the Virginia Assembly in these words:

Freedom wears a cap which can, without a tongue, call together all those who long to shake off the fetters of slavery, and as such an insurrection would surely be attended with most dreadful consequences, so I think we cannot be too early in providing against it, both by putting ourselves in a better posture of defense and making a law to prevent the consultations of Negroes.

Apparently the honorable governors advice did not fall on deaf ears because the Virginia slave code mandated that should a slave run away and not immediately return, anyone whosoever may kill or destroy such slaves by such means as he shall think fit. In addition the courts had authority to order dismemberment or any other measure as they in their discretion shall think fit, for the reclaiming of any such incorrigible slave, and terrifying others from like practices.

Other examples abound of the terroristic use of violence codified into law with the express purpose of maintaining our ancestors in a position of abject fear and servitude. If times have changed, the residual and accumulative benefits of white-skin privilege still ensure the legal codification of violence in maintenance of the status quo. It is this status quo, with all the moral righteousness of the founding fathers behind it, that now preaches against the evils of terrorism. Former President Ronald Reagan admitted to a profound historical analogy when he equated the terrorist and murderous CIA-backed Nicaraguan Contras to the moral equivalent of Americas founding fathers. To borrow a phrase from the distinguished Governor Spotswood of Virginia, African-Americans would do well by putting themselves in a better posture of defense.

The purpose in drawing attention to early American history is not to revel in moral self-righteousness or engage in useless judgment of another period when behavior and attitudes were determined by different standards than today. It should not be too difficult to see that the founding fathers of America were men of property driven by the contradictions of European culture, a culture based on agriculture, with feudal hierarchies of the nobility (lords), vassals and peasants, which evolved from the slave societies of Greece and Rome. History is clear: erected upon the European conquest of North America, upon the genocide of the Indians and the racist brutality of slavery, Europeans stratified a civilization based on private property. The European need for land and space, combined with the dubious ethics of mercantile capitalism, made racism and genocide integral to the society and system we know today. The rhapsody of the American dream sold to countless immigrants is only a part of the true story. We must understand the truth of our historical experience so that we are clear in our thinking and fully appreciate what America is capable of.

Racism has been an important tool in dividing the poor and working peoples of America. It has prevented white laborers, the middle class, and various Third World immigrant communities from uniting against an exploitative and relatively small white male elite.

Racism has been an important tool in dividing the poor and working peoples of America. It has prevented white laborers, the middle class, and various Third World immigrant communities from uniting against an exploitative and relatively small white male elite. Despite this objective function of racism it would be inappropriate for the African-American to ignore the very real physical threat racism represents to our empowerment. In the struggle for power, often perception is more important than reality.

The common Eurocentric perception of African-Americans is that they lack certainty of principle and a willingness to defend themselves. Our self-destructive treatment of each other, that is, our obsessive imitation of the most shallow white American values, our disregard for Black youth, Black on Black crime and the entire range of psychotic self-hatred we act out every day in our social relations reinforce white Americans with negative perceptions of Black people. Many of the problems that now confront African-Americans begin at home, in our community. Until we establish independent mechanisms of community supervision that provide moral, ethical, political and social direction, African-Americans will continue to be the doormat of U.S. society. Depending on outside forces to regulate and govern the African-American community is a prescription for disaster. A community without internal authority and control is no community at all.

Weakness tempts power to practice brutality and oppression. The seeming increase of so-called racially motivated attacks is in large part the consequence of the apparent inability or unwillingness of Black America to defend itself. While the term racially motivated attack is a media buzz word intended to individualize systemic racist subjugation, we need not fall victim to this deception. There is nothing exceptional or individual about racist attack in a racist society. Media buzzwords notwithstanding, our response to racist attack must be collective, uncompromising and most of all organized! We should respond in a political manner to all racist attack, as well as to conditions that invite attacks. Both legal racist violence (police, state and institutional brutality) and extra-legal racist violence (racist gang violence, individual discriminatory treatment) serve the same function: the subjugation of the targeted racial national minority. Black people must break with the mental baggage of slavery and shed the knee-jerk non-threatening negro posture white folks love so well. Our concept of force, its political utility, is obsolete. Force and violence must be seen for what they are and placed in a relevant political context: instruments of political power, instruments of control.

Depending on outside forces to regulate and govern the African-American community is a prescription for disaster. A community without internal authority and control is no community at all.

The violence of racist oppression, when internalized by the African-American community, results in reactionary violence or negative violence, and it must be repressed by the African community if self-defense is to advance beyond vigilantism. Vigilantism is not the political organization of force-it is the social organization of civilian frustration. It can be co-opted by the status quo, misdirected by opportunists, and will eventually fizzle out. The political organization of force by the Black community implies its connection to the struggle for power and control over the entire quality of life available to Black people. Unlike reactionary apolitical violence, or vigilante force, the concept of Black self-defense, e.g. the political organization of force, is proactive force. Self-defense in this context is as broad as the requirements of and the struggle for empowerment. Legality and illegality are relative to the struggle for empowerment not sacrosanct in and of themselves. White folks taught us the efficacy of this approach to this use of force.

By way of example, the tactic of economic boycott can be seen as an economic form of self-defense against economic exploitation, injustice or discrimination especially when it upsets the colonial relationship between the African American community and the status quo power. In this sense it is proactive and not reactive. Taking control of social institutions or educational systems that affect the quality of African-American life by establishment political means, i.e. electoral politics, and the creation of grassroots alternative institutions which provide services to the Black community are forms of proactive self-defense, for a primary objective of self-defense is deterrence, and a limited political power is better than no power at all. But it is not always enough to deter racist attacks.

Black Americans can never relinquish the right to exert a political consequence on those institutions and individuals who abuse us. Questions of legality and illegality are relative the appropriateness is both tactical and ethical. Insofar as Black America is unable to punish racist brutality and exert a political consequence for racist attack we are weak, vulnerable and unequal. It is a moral imperative to organize Black people to defend themselves. We must get away from the plantation mentality and the cowardly notion that organizing force in defense of Black people and in pursuit of our political objectives, when necessary, is somehow amoral and therefore rightly illegal. All people have the right to defend themselves. Moreover, all that is legal is not morally just.

The proper criterion for distinguishing between right and wrong is not mysterious. It is embodied in the principles that advance the cause of the oppressed and exploited over the cause of those who live by oppression and exploitation. Even though the oppressed and exploited may not always be correct, their cause is just and right. Nor should we foolishly imagine that, by following the guidance and leadership of those who uphold the cause of the oppressed, we are somehow conferring favors on such leadership. For leadership is a burden surely the more one knows, the more one is responsible for. This is why current Black leaders act like they dont know whats happening in times of crisis, because white folks will hold them responsible for the consciousness of the masses. Our leaders must be responsible to us not to the status quo, which demands that our people remain in check.

Our leaders must be responsible to us not to the status quo, which demands that our people remain in check.

Humankind has a weakness for falsehood, vanity and crookedness, not because we are inured to truth and selfless devotion to community, but because it is much easier to pursue falsehood and vanity than to seek truth and social responsibility. So it is, that the delusions of the material world gratify us and yet leave an aching emptiness in our soul. Perhaps this weakness is why African-Americans, in the tradition of Western materialism, would much rather follow a fool dressed in a silk suit than a wise righteous person draped in rags. We fold our hearts like a handkerchief, tucking it away in our back pocket, sitting on it as if embarrassed that we possess a heart at all. Surely the corruption of a persons heart is a great tragedy for the malaise of the human spirit is reflected in the social condition of a people. Their need arises from the drifting and unfocused hunger of Black America for a class of men, women and youth committed to upholding the social, moral, ethical and spiritual integrity of our community no matter how great the sacrifice. We need to care more about ourselves than about what white folks think about us, and in so doing realize that history does not respond to those who lack the basic instruments of bringing about historical change. This means we must acquire independent power. The rhetoric of liberalism, left dogma, or right integrationist accommodation are passe, obsolete. They are without moral or ethical integrity and of limited utility to Black America in crisis. The crisis of Black America is not only material (i.e. economic), or political, or even social. It is at its root a malaise of the heart of the spirit. The reality of the nation-state in which we live is in transition. Our struggle for liberation as a people must reflect this and invigorate us with a new sense of direction and purpose.

We need to care more about ourselves than about what white folks think about us, and in so doing realize that history does not respond to those who lack the basic instruments of bringing about historical change.

The world is changing. It is in a transition from a world order dominated by European economic hegemony born out of racist colonialism to one in which that system of domination is under increasing strain to accommodate the interests of the disenfranchised. Increasing awareness of the need for a world order and redistribution of wealth unencumbered by selfish class-based nationalism is rising in the world. Technology has placed humankind at the crossroads of history. What will be Black Americas role in the historic struggles that lie ahead? Black leaders who do not frame the struggle in this context are not Black leaders at all.

While we must prepare ourselves collectively to wage many struggles at once, we must do so with a common sense of mission and purpose. Without this sense of mission and purpose we will succumb to the spiritual and material degradation of a racist culture. The times in which we live portend both hope and doom.

During the long centuries of the slave trade, Africans had a sense of mission, of common purpose to survive and defeat the brutal system of dehumanization and break de chains. In post-Reconstruction America, when the national agenda was set for the remainder of the century by putting Negroes back in their place as neo-serfs (sharecroppers) and servants, Black people had a sense of collective mission. When white labor was bludgeoned into submission by the robber barons of commerce, and the political elites of both North and South consolidated the economic wealth of America into the greatest material growth in human history, Black people had a sense of mission, purpose and common direction which culminated in the upheavals of the early- and mid-20th century for civil and human rights. We must rekindle this flame and sense of purpose, but on a much higher level. We know what white America is capable of when it comes to people of color. We understand the limitations and imperatives of history, and a racist culture. The question therefore is what do we intend to do about it.

Dhoruba al-Mujahid bin Wahad is an American writer and activist, who is a former prisoner, Black Panther Party leader, and co-founder of the Black Liberation Army. This essay is excerpted from Still Black, Still Proud.

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Toward Rethinking Self-Defense in a Racist Culture - The MIT Press Reader

GIRLS with bachelors degrees are mopping floors for a salary as low as Rs5,000-6,000 per month, says Ahsan Ali from Maid in Pakistan, an agency that provides domestic help to households in Karachi.

We mostly service Defence, then Pakistan Employees Cooperative Housing Society, followed by Nazimabad all the posh areas, he says, explaining that they have divided household chores into different categories. Cleaning, washing and ironing are one category, cooking and washing dishes belongs to another category whereas babysitting is a third. The wages of each category are different, depending on the skill level and fluency of the maid.

While the lowest monthly salary that a maid of Maid in Pakistan earns is Rs25,000, some earn as much as Rs30,000-33,000 if they are fluent in English. Such maids are hired by families in Defence for their children. To put this salary in context, a Montessori teacher with a diploma from the internationally recognised Association Montessori Internationale that costs upwards of Rs200,000 earns Rs23,000 while working in an upscale pre-school in Clifton.

Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate the market size of domestic labour in Pakistan is worth billions if it could be formalised by the private sector

The Defence area is serviced by Azam Basti, Akhtar Colony, Kashmir Colony and Qayyumabad. Girls from areas such as Azam Basti and Mehmoodabad are well-spoken in English.

They used to work in banks and insurance for Rs18,000-20,000 and are thus better-groomed and better-educated than the average masi.

Maid in Pakistan has given placements to about 600-650 maids in Karachi and has about 40,000 maids on the roster. Its a business worth billions, says Mr Ali. We have an online presence but there must be 25-30 small agencies in Karachi alone that use old-fashioned marketing techniques such as passing out flyers in the vicinity.

Market size

There were 12 million urban households in 2017, as per the census. The Household Integrated Economic Survey places 43 per cent of the urban population in the fifth quintile with a monthly average income of about Rs60,000. Therefore, about 5m residences can afford a maid.

If each household was to have one maid earning the minimum wage of Rs17,500 per month, the market size for domestic labour for urban areas in Pakistan clocks in at the stupendous amount of Rs87.5 billion a month or over Rs1 trillion a year.

Obviously, a household earning Rs60,000 will not be spending nearly a third of its income on domestic help. More likely, the closest slum area will provide a more economical option (of around Rs2,000-5,000) since most middle-income households have at least one domestic worker in the house. Similarly, there are those who earn millions in a month for whom the minimum wage is less than the cost of a new pair of shoes and need to have a staff to maintain their homes.

These back-of-the-envelope calculations are illustrative of how big and vastly untapped the informal market of domestic help is in Pakistan. Statista places the value of the worldwide household cleaners market at $32.6bn in 2020, estimated to grow to $40.4bn by 2025 (not accounting for the coronavirus impact).

Defining workers

We dont call them masi, we call them helpers, says Suniya Sadullah Khan, co-founder of the app Mauqa Online that provides domestic help at hourly rates in Lahore, Islamabad and Rawalpindi. Mauqa started about 2.5 years ago and has roughly a hundred maids available for hire.

They recruit by going to communities in slum areas and refuse to hire anyone below the age of 18. Using an Uber-like app, they allow the domestic help to rate the customers and vice versa. Charging Rs300 an hour, depending on the service, they give the option of not going back to the house if the client is unpleasant.

Similarly, TAF Foundation (TAFF) is a non-governmental organisation that recruits from the suburbs of Karachi and slum areas. We have girls who have earned masters degrees but under the strict supervision of their brothers or fathers, says TAFF CEO Dr Hina Hussain Kazmi. They have no confidence or people skills. Through a programme of 15 weeks, we train them for housework as well as social and financial skills and call them housekeepers or house managers.

TAFF ensure that its graduates earn a minimum wage of Rs17,500 though some, for example, the one working for the Italian consul general, earns upwards of Rs30,000. To date, TAFF has generated labour income of Rs80m.

Both TAFF and Mauqa work towards re-branding the humble masi and changing the culture of arbitrarily assigning work and hours to a more structured format. TAFF mediates a contract between the employer and the housekeepers. The contract is valid for a year, has the job description, working hours and facilities provided, says Dr Kazmi. Initially, there was resistance since the culture was such that one day the girl would be asked to put oil in her employers hair, and the next day she would be asked to cook. Employers have been known to fire workers when they refuse to deviate from the job description stated in the contract.

Whether the girl is working for a few hours, half a day or the full day, she would earn the same, says Ms Khan. But because of the hourly rate, they feel less exploited as they earn for the number of hours worked and our customers have become efficient in terms of housecleaning rather than coming up with work just because the maid is around.

Uplifting maids through laws is a long and arduous process, made more difficult by the countrys chequered history of poor implementation. Nearly 85pc of the employers are abusive towards the girls, treating them like slaves, says Mr Ali. Media reports abound of rape, murder and imprisonment of domestic help. However, if the private sector formalises the informal sector of domestic help, not only will it result in upliftand empowerment, it can also generate higher revenue in terms of labour hours.

The essential service of the rich

Haye meri bechari beti, said the Defence wali aunty as she watched in horror while her daughter mopped up the floor. Why dont you send the live-in driver to fetch the maid every day? Or better yet, tell her to shift into your storage room, she advised.

In the first couple of weeks, belts were girdled and Defence wali aunties who had never picked up the plunger were determined to fight the good fight with all the jharoos, poochas and Scotch Brites at hand.

But days passed and squatting for thighs that could do yoga on mats but had not learned the art of using the humble poocha while walk-squatting became just too darn difficult. Demand for daily help coming in changed to domestic help living at home. For those for whom this was not an option, drivers were dispatched to keep the sparkling white bungalows spotless.

A battle may be raged in hospitals where doctors and nurses clad in personal protective equipment for armour have flowers air-dropped upon them in cities while nations stand in balconies to clap their thanks. But the humble masi, using a makeshift dupatta as a mask and caring not a whit about the coronavirus though being the most vulnerable to it, will battle her way through crowded public transport to provide the essential service of making sure her bajis toilet remains streak-free.

Published in Dawn, The Business and Finance Weekly, June 1st, 2020

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Elevating the humble masi to a maid - DAWN.com

The savvy Lady Gaga fan in 2020, when confronted with a new song called Fun Tonight, knows enough to flinch. Because it is a latter-day Lady Gaga song; because it is 2020. Im not having fun tonight, goes the chorus to Fun Tonight. Right. Thought so.

The vibe is downbeat electro-pop. (If youre still obsessed with Ally, her A Star Is Born characterand why wouldnt you beits caught halfway between the bubbly frivolity of Why Did You Do That? and the stern grandeur of Shallow.) The lyrics range from Wish I could be what I know I am to I feel like Im in a prison hell. The songs intended target, according to savvy Lady Gaga gossip hounds, is her ex-fianc Christian Carino. (She is now reportedly dating a New York Times editors ex-boyfriend.) You love the paparazzi, love the fame / Even though you know it causes me pain, Gaga laments, evoking past glories, now drained of their glory, or at least their frivolity. Even her idea of a prison hell has changed dramatically since she recruited Beyonc for the Telephone video.

Gaga launches the chorus of Fun Tonight with a lovely, anguished falsetto swoop, the words borderline nonsensicalIm feelin the way that Im feelin, Im feelin with youthe anguish nonetheless palpable. The end result is neither the best nor the saddest song on Gagas sixth album, Chromatica, out Friday. The best songand Shallow excepted, her best and hopefully biggest pop hit in nearly a decadeactually is the saddest. But dip anywhere into this record, even the fussy orchestral interludes somehow, and the bawling-on-the-dance-floor pathos will bowl you over the same way it bowled her over.

In touting Gagas glorious return to full-blown dance pop after the meta rockist provocations of 2018s A Star Is Born and the minivan-ad turbo-Americana of 2016s actually quite beguiling Joanne, the Chromatica rollout had a soothingly chaotic throwback quality to it. The goofy tweets. The wanton messiness. (The leak-plagued emergence of bombastic lead single Stupid Love was a saga unto itself.) The gaudy Grimes-before-Grimes sci-fi flamboyance of the early visuals, like the cutscenes in a Japanese RPG whose battle system you could never hope to understand. The COVID-borne release delay (which also nixed a planned Coachella sneak attack) was a disquieting new wrinkle, certainly, but it felt great, in a nostalgic future-shock sorta way, to be once again bewildered.

With reliably brash production from BloodPop, Burns, Skrillex, and other proud maximalists, the resulting record, which spreads 16 tracks across a relatively restrained 43 minutes, has a surface outrageousness youll certainly recognize, but a relatable bone-deep melancholy too. Unlike, say, Dua Lipas Future Nostalgiaa superior pop album but a far more discordant self-quarantine listen, given its raw yearning for communal dance-party releaseChromatica is the perfect summer album for the Lost Summer of 2020. Im completely lonely / Please dont judge me, she entreats us amid the trance-adjacent freedom-via-isolation jam 1000 Doves; her idea of typical pop-star self-empowerment this time out is bellowing, Im still something if I dont got a man / Im a free woman, on Free Woman. Its unsettling that she even felt it necessary to point that out.

The flamboyance and the desolationEven when you feel 6 feet under, you can still fire on all cylinders, Gaga told Zane Lowe in February, describing her studio mind-set as Im miserable, Im sad, Im depressedare productively at odds from the start. Im tired of screaming at the top of my lungs, she announces on Alice, her voice ever-so-slightly robotic, the uptempo house chug evoking a Wonderland with little wonder in it. At times this restraint, this hint of steely resignation undercuts the wackiness, which is a shame: The blaring neo-disco of Replay could serve to be, lets say, 50 percent wilder, and the understated Sour Candy, costarring the disruptive K-pop girl group Blackpink, could be, lets say, 200 percent more disruptive. But when she gets the uppers vs. downers balance just right, look out.

The one-two punch of 911 (her monotone extra robotic, her mentality extra self-defeating) and Plastic Doll (her falsetto swoops extra anguished) is especially bruising. The self-medicating lyrics to 911 range from Turnin up emotional faders / Keep repeating self-hating phrases to Wish I laughed and kept the good friendships; the hushed bridge to Plastic Doll begins with her chanting, Tell me, who dressed you? / Whered you get that hat? / Why is she cryin? / Whats the price tag? There is a hint heremore than a hint, reallyof the dehumanization that pop stardom demands, the disastrous private life that a boldface-celebrity lifestyle inevitably leaves in its wake. She sounds more sympathetic on this topic than Drake does, anyway.

But Rain on Me, a triumphant pop-star summit with Ariana Grande, is the peak that expertly doubles as a valley: Its coming down on me / Water like misery, Gaga wails, before the monster hook kicks in. Its anthemic but frightfully vulnerable, an instant pool-party classic with the troubled soul of a drained pool. Its her best pop song since, what? The Edge of Glory? The hug she and Grande share at the end of the video is awkward in an awfully endearing way. Your first hug with someone youre not currently living with, however many months from now that transpires, will look a lot like it.

Very little of this has that Gaga-specific WTF quality youre likely craving: Its the difference between chain-smoking and fashioning all your cigarettes into a pair of rad sunglasses. But Sine From Above, a late-album collaboration with Sir Elton John, gets closest to liftoff, emotional and otherwise. The theme is musical inspiration as the balm for personal devastation: Then the signal split in two / The sound created stars like me and you, the two divas sing to each other, consolingly. Before there was love, there was silence. Its egotistical in an awfully unguarded way.

But the most jarring and empowering and weirdly thrilling moment in the song belongs to John alone: He thunders, When I was young / I felt immortal! with more ferocious catharsis than youll find in all of Rocketman. It would simply sound ridiculous if you didnt totally believe him. Sine From Above wraps up with an abrupt, colossal breakbeat, and the disorientation is pleasurable indeed. There are lightning flashes of the classic, heedless, fearless Lady Gaga throughout Chromatica, and all the more thrilling for how brief they are, and all the sadder for their brevity.

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Lady Gagas Chromatica Is the Pop Album for the Lost Summer of 2020 - The Ringer

Noozhawk hosted a webinar on Friday that addressed education hurdles and how remote instruction changed the learning experience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The webinar, titled Learning Together Remotely: Navigating Education in the COVID-19 Era, explored the lessons and challengesaseducators and students switchedfromface-to-face classes toremote learning.

During the webinar, viewers tuned in to an open discussion about how the pandemic accelerated technology-delivered instruction and fueled new opportunities.

Kim Clark, Noozhawk's vice president of business development,moderated the free, live Zoom webinar with five educators from the Santa Barbara Unified School District.

In support of the school district, the Santa Barbara Education Foundation gathered an accomplished group of educators who have worked tirelessly to help young learners stay engaged and on track during these unprecedented times.

The Santa Barbara Education Foundation supports and provides programs that enrich the academic, artistic and personal development of students in the Santa Barbara Unified School District.

More than 100 people registered for the webinar, and the 60-minute session includedan insightful question-and-answer session with guest speakers.

Click here to view thewebinarrecording with password 7P!hh^=^.

Youths across Santa Barbara County are not attending regular in-person classroom instruction because of state-mandated closures in an attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. Educators and school officialscontinue to provide a wide range of essential services.

When asked about somesignificant challenges that students are facing during school closures and the implementation of remote learning, Dos Pueblos High School Principal Bill Woodard spoke about the nature of COVID-19-related school closures.

The campus community had to shift gears on the fly.

We arent really doing distance learning or remote learning, he said. We are doing emergency COVID-19 response learning, and therefore, not having any preparation for that was extremely challenging as we rolled it out.

The spread of the coronavirus forced school campus closures in March.

Students were suddenly cut off from peers and school teachers, and everyone had to quickly adopt digital technology.

Students were not expecting it, and teachers were not expecting it to be for the rest of the school year, Woodard said. They didnt have any sort of warning that it was coming.

There were a lot of unmet needs in terms of just simply emotional safety, and also physical safety and comfort. Parents were losing their jobs. There werefood insecurity issues, and on top of that, now you have to shift the way youre learning at home.

Some students didnt have aconducive learning-at-home environment, and some still dont, frankly, Woodard said.

Franklin Elementary School music teacher Joanna Pascoe spoke about the benefits that remote learning offers compared to traditional on-site instruction.

My favorite part about all of this has been the sense of community, and not just within Santa Barbara but the global community, Pascoe said.

She received an influx of emails, with people trying to help and provide online resources that can support students at home.

The shift to learning online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic allowed different types of teaching material compared to only in a classroom.

The global aspect of suddenly having access to the Berlin orchestra or the Los Angeles Philharmonic or ballet companies in New York has been incredible, Pascoe said. A huge advantage of online learning is how much help and support we are getting from the global community.

The change also cultivated independent learners, and students are learning more independently.

We are teaching the students how to be their own learners, and how to find the resources for the subject you are most interested in, Pascoe said.

Ali Cortes works through the Santa Barbara district as the clinical youth outreach worker. She provides trauma-focused intervention, such as case management, advocacy, mentorship, workshops,mediations, empowerment groups, and therapy to at-risk adolescents and families.

During the webinar, Cortes mentioned some obstacles to student success in the wake of remote learning. Humanizing technology is a big barrier, she said.

No amount of remote learning is going to compare to the connection of a human being, Cortes said. We are all on the same ocean. We keep hearing the analogy of we are on the same boat, and we are not. We are all on the same ocean,and everybody is in a different place.

Some students have come face to face with the challenge of not havingspecific instructional materials for hands-on programs.

Franklin Elementary STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts and math)teacher Brendan Carroll said he gets creative with his lessons to keep students engaged. Young learners made origami, as well as sugar and salt crystal experiments and created aluminum foil boats.

We dont have the actual physical materials to give the students, so personally I havebeen trying to design engineering or science lessons based on my guesswork on what they (students) should have at home, Carroll said. This is sort of a patchwork band-aid situation.

Kelly Choi, director and co-founder of Santa Barbara Unified's Academy for Successprogram, also participated in the webinar. She described the lessons learned in the new world of remote instruction from the standpoint of an educator. For example, teachers learned new toolsand other creative solutions.

There are a lot of things us as teaches have wanted to do for a long time, Choi said. We have been in a cycle that has notallowed us as teachers to have time to get out there and try it or learn it all of a sudden, we were forced into a level of skill like learning technology and Zoom."

Noozhawk held its first webinarearlier this week, focusing on how the community is dealing with mental wellness during the coronavirus pandemic and local resources to help combat stress in the time of COVID-19.

The free, live Zoom webinar, titled Mental Wellness During the COVID-19 Crisis," included representatives ofDomestic Violence Solutions,CALM(Child Abuse Listening Mediation) andSanctuary Centers of Santa Barbara. Click hereto view the webinarrecording with password 2K##0=1!.

Noozhawk staff writer Brooke Holland can be reached at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.

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Noozhawk Webinar Focuses on Navigating Education During COVID-19 Pandemic - Noozhawk