Its a sweltering afternoon in Hollywood and Im navigating a grittier part of town in search of my soul. In truth, anyone searching for their soul in Hollywood should probably be directed to the nearest mental health facility, but Im on the trail of Harry the Healer, shaman to the stars.

As I pull up to the address Harry texted me, it appears to not exist, or is somehow hidden on the street of mostly run-down cottages. This is where celebs come for healing? Id expected a ritzy mansion given Harrys supposed clientele (his devotees range from screen vet Anthony Hopkins to Aussie Hollywood brat packers Todd Lasance, Liam McIntyre and Luke Mitchell). My stomach tightens. What the hell am I doing, going to a strange mans house on my own? I text my husband the address, just in case.

When I finally find the front door, Im greeted by a slim but muscular older man whose golden skin literally glows back at me as he leans in for a warm hug. Harry the Healer (real name Harry Paul) looks exceedingly healthy and happy.

He leads me to a dark treatment room where a massage bed glimmers under slowly flashing disco lights. Spa music plays and the air conditioning hums (thank God). I must be in the right place after all. Plus, Harry told me on the phone that he once got drunk with Chris Hemsworth; call me shallow but that counts for something.

While I wouldnt have assumed getting wasted would lead to spiritual enlightenment, this is Hollywood. Celebrities have long espoused their devotion to some form of spirituality, be it Madonna, Britney Spears and Demi Moore following Kabbalah or Tom Cruises obsession with Scientology. But while those are huge organisations with textbook religious studies, the current spiritual trend is getting more personal, and making superstars out of individual healers who are tapping into the worlds current obsession with all things woo woo and wellness.

Jennifer Anistons recent revelation that shes been partaking in goddess circles for the past three decades where she and her girlfriends sit in a circle and pass around a talking stick to help navigate major life events sparked a slew of internet headlines. And when Gwyneth Paltrow isnt spruiking vaginal steaming or Psychic Vampire Repellent, shes extolling the powers of her personal spirit guide and bro, shaman Durek who calls her his soul sis.

But why exactly am I here? Like most mums of young children, Im consumed by the needs of my two daughters to the point that Ive found myself asking, Who am I, again? Or rather, Who was I? Im longing to rediscover myself and, over the next two weeks, I plan to make like Gwyn and Jen and do some serious soul-searching.

In preparation for today, I watched a video of a shaman performing healing on a woman. She sits closed-eyed as he converses with spirits through her body, speaking rapidly in an African language, which then propels her into what looks like a nightmare of an orgasm. It looks horrific but Im oddly intrigued.

The main reason Im here, though, is to strengthen my connection to my mother, who passed away 26 years ago,and who introduced me to spirituality. I have many happy memories of perusing the aisles of Londons annual Mind, Body and Spirit Festival with her in my early teens, watching reiki masters and crystal healers at work.

And when Mum got cancer, after radiotherapy didnt help, she had electromagnetism therapy, which uses crystals to help balance energy frequencies in the body. Even her sceptical GP attributed it to her living for four years after her diagnosis and called it a miracle.

What would you say life is asking of you at the moment? Harry interrupts my thoughts. Youre not going to make me cry, are you? I blurt out. In the serene setting I suddenly feel emotionally vulnerable, which in real life I thankfully dont have time to. Probably, he smiles gently. I tell him of my yearning to connect with Mum.

Writer, Madeline Collins with her mum.

Were either connected or were distracted, Harry croons smoothly. The mind is connected to the breath so you need to be aware of your breathing. I rarely am. Shallow breathing, shallow life. If you start getting distracted, breathe and connect internally.

Were human beings, not human doings, he goes on. I love that. So when you authentically let go, youll get more than you dreamed of. He tells me of superstar clients who have the adulation of the world but still want to kill themselves. Remember, your opinion is the only one that matters. Try telling my kids that.

Harry reads that Im addicted to heavy-dense energy due to my habit of expecting things to go wrong so that I cant be disappointed, and that Im here because my soul and spirit is calling for me to elevate, let go and be free. Hes a wise man whos suddenly brandishing a huge vibrating machine. It looks like its straight out of the 80s, just like the disco lights.

Lets find where you hold tension in your body, Harry says, as he slowly moves the machine up and down my legs, over my stomach, across my heart and back again. Then, after asking permission to touch me, he begins to knead my jaw, which really hurts.

Hang in there, he says. Can you see your mum? Shes here. But hes mistaken. Behind closed eyes, I suddenly see the beautiful face and hear the voice of my friend and former flatmate, who died in 2018 of a swift and aggressive form of cancer.

I was so devastated when I learnt of her passing via her husbands Facebook page that I couldnt leave my house for a week.

Tears roll down my cheeks as she answers a question Ive wrestled with since her death. I hadnt expected this and feel huge relief that Ive found some way to connect with my friend, who I never got to say goodbye to.

I leave Harrys hidden house with a sense of inner calm (and a strict recommendation to switch to pH-balanced alkaline water).

Im staring at Andrea Bendewalds chiselled jawline, trying to work out where I know it from ... its Suddenly Susan, the critically panned but oh-so juicy 90s sitcom. Recently, she had a bit part in Apple TVs Morning Wars, but today, shes guiding me in a full-moon circle.

Andrea is something of a circling savant she regularly leads circles for Jennifer Aniston, including at her 50th birthday getaway in Mexico. The actresses have been friends for more than 30 years; they both attended Manhattans High School of Performing Arts before moving to LA.

Jennifer Aniston with Andrea Bendewald.

Needless to say, my expectations are high as I rock up to DEN Meditation in Studio City, just over the hill from Hollywood. I enter the large, dimly lit room and see 12 other women setting up their place. Thankfully I fit in well in my no-label activewear. There are women of all shapes and sizes, none displaying the sports-bra-bursting boob jobs you often see in Hollywood wellness classes.

Andrea begins slowly beating a drum to connect us to our own heartbeat. Imagine theres a lotus flower at the top of your crown chakra, it opens up and a beautiful white light extends into the sky and the full moon were sitting under, she guides.

I try my best but my mind keeps wandering to where Id rather be: the beach. Luckily, attention soon turns to the talking stick, the centrepiece of circling, which Andrea describes as an interactive mindfulness practice and talking meditation. She encourages us to channel the fullmoons energy in positive ways, which can otherwiselead to anger and sadness.

Guidelines include no commenting on what someone else says, and whatevers shared in the circle stays there. If we hear something that resonates with us, were encouraged to murmur a-ho, a spiritually polite version of ken oath.

Each person holds the stick in turn and speaks their truth: overwhelmed mums; women feeling stuck from moving forward or going through dark times; those who find meditating lonely and came seeking a community from the circle. Its all relatable stuff and were a-hoing galore.

Im the only one who has an ugly cry, after speaking about Mum.

I feel a kinship with all the strangers in the room, yet dont feel the need to swap numbers when the circle ends. I leave vowing to return, despite the four-hour round trip. Goddess or full-moon circles may sometimes be dismissed as zany or frivolous (a common pattern when it comes to groups of females throughout history), but theres something undeniably powerful about women banding together and sharing their struggles to lift one another up.

Im still on a spiritual high three days later when I speak to shaman Durek on the phone. We couldnt meet in person due to scheduling conflicts, but Im determined to absorb his wisdom (he also counts Nina Dobrev, Selma Blair and Gerard Butler as fans).

I tell Durek about my mum and he speaks at breakneck speed, imparting all kinds of fascinating and life-affirming information I cant possibly keep up with. No wonder he has Hollywood enthralled.

Suddenly he tells me to tap my left hand three times. I eagerly oblige. Was he going to give me the connection to Mum I was craving? Gwyneth had lost her beloved father and she trusted him After a few more instructions, I feel a floating feeling throughout my body and my feet start tingling. But then Durek tells me a hawk has just landed outside his window and is staring at him, and that hawks signify a breakthrough to the other side.

Oooh, you just lost me, says my inner sceptic.

Not that I dont believe him. In grief, religion or any kind of healing, my motto is whatever works. And having taken time to focus, I feel more connected to myself than I have in years, and to Mum, too. Above all, Ive realised that pausing to breathe and be in the moment is perhaps the most powerful tonic for this often-crazy world. So while summoning ancient spirits isnt my thing, Im already counting down the days until the next full moon.

This article originally appeared in the February 2020 issue of marie claire.

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We put Jen Aniston and Gwyneth's spirituality gurus to the test - Marie Claire

THE third in our series dedicated to the memory and works of the conservative philosopher Sir Roger Scruton. We are targeting the Conservative government with a series of lessons drawn from his writing. Will they start to listen to him now?

Lesson number three isthis Scrutonism conservatism is not a sin or a heresy, but a possible worldview, all the more interesting in being condemned by the communists and despised by the Western left.

It is to be found in the speech he gave on national identity and the legacy of communism this last June, when he was awardedthe highest State civilian honour for foreigners by the Polish President Andrzej Duda.

LAST week Sir Roger Scruton was awarded the highest State civilian honour for foreigners by the Polish President Andrzej Duda. Afterwards he spoke in the Polish Parliament on the legacy of communism and the emergence of new nationalist movements.

How comforting it is that at least one person out there understands and respects our basic needs and capacities as human beings but how sad that those listening to him most are in countries such as Poland. Its a speech that reveals the huge gulf there is between his intellect and vision and the strutting, preening pretenders who are in the Tory leadership race. His speech can be viewed and listened tohereand the full text is printed below.

But first aprcisof his main points:

The division besetting the continent today is no longer between totalitarian socialism and free democracy, but reflect new battle lines between adherence to the nation state, with its language, institutions and religious inheritance on the one hand and, on the other, the cosmopolitan vision of a trans-national order, a borderless economy and a universal law of human rights.

The legal and political institutions of our continent have turned in a cosmopolitan direction, not least in the former communist states. While the law and jurisprudence of the European Courts have filled the legal vacuum left by the Communist Party, enabling them to receive and protect incoming investment and thereby to enter the global capitalist economy with relatively little friction, there has been far too little awareness of its social and cultural cost.

Freedom of movement has meant a massive one-way shift of populations out of the former communist countries into the West, and in particular into Britain, which has set a very low barrier to entry. It is one cause of the Brexit crisis but has also had a serious demographic effect on the Vyegrad countries, which have lost many of the best and brightest of their young people.

The charge of populism is levelled against movements for national independence and national renewal largely in order to discount the vote of the many who support them.

The conflict between the left intelligentsia and human nature has shifted from the sphere of socialism versus capitalism to this new sphere, of enlightened liberalism (a universal and borderless political order, in which conflicts supposedly vanish because their cause national loyalties has been swept away) versus residual nationalism and the inherited sentiments of identity and belonging.

The EU was founded by people moved by that enlightenment idea, and who saw nationalism as the force that had unleashed the century of European wars. However, looking back, it is just as reasonable to see the idea of a universal and borderless form of politics as underlying the imprisonment of East and Central Europe by the communists. Nationalism of the German kind was certainly destructive; but so was internationalism of the Soviet kind.

The current situation should be seen as an opportunity and not as a crisis. After thirty years of confusion the people of Eastern and central Europe are beginning to understand that they are heirs to two great achievements: on the one hand, the nation state as a form of social and political identity; on the other hand the Enlightenment conception of citizenship, in which each assumes the full responsibilities of social membership under a shared rule of law. The two achievements are forced into conflict with each other, in part because the EU wishes to dampen or even destroy the national idea. But properly understood they are mutually dependent.

For without national identity and the loyalty that stems from it, there is no way to build a society of citizens. Democracy and the rule of law are realities only if opposing sides can live with each other on terms. The great error of the communists was to eliminate opposition, to conscript the people into a unity that they had not chosen and were not allowed to question. The great benefit of democracy is that it makes opposition possible and also legitimate.

So-called populists are right to emphasise the nation state as the fount of loyalty. And their enlightened liberal opponents should acknowledge this, and cease to use the European institutions as a way to punish the governments that lean in this direction. And reciprocally those who wish to revive the national ideal, and to affirm the rights of national sovereignty, should listen to the voice of the liberal enlightenment, and accept that national sentiments must always be tempered by the recognition of others out there, who do not and cannot share them.

Speech in Full

It is a great honour to be asked to speak to this gathering, representing the Parliaments of the former communist states. And I welcome the opportunity to say something about the legacy of communism and what it means for us today.

I confess to being an anti-communist. During the 1970s and 1980s anti-communists were shunned in our universities in Britain. After all, we were attacking the revolution that offered to liberate mankind from the world-wide capitalist conspiracy. Our professors admitted that the Soviet Union had gone wrong; but it was wrong in practice, not in theory. We apologists for capitalism were wrong in theory, which was far worse than the mere accident of causing twenty million deaths and the extinction of individual liberty across half the globe. The fact that we were right in practice was barely noticed by our critics.

We have lived through all that, but it seems to me that the lesson still needs to be learned. Life was made hard for us by our nice colleagues, who repeatedly expressed their outrage at our nastiness, in order to put their own niceness on display. It was in those days that I learned just how nasty niceness can be. From the moment in 1980 when I came out as a defender of conservative values against the socialist orthodoxy, my life has been one long succession of attacks, designed to undermine my standing as a public intellectual. Teaching in the University of London was particularly difficult. Indeed, my first true experience of intellectual freedom was here in Poland, where I travelled to speak at conferences and private seminars, arranged by a small circle in Britain who, like me, were keen to make contact with their fellow dissidents behind the Iron Curtain. In Poland, the universal contempt for the communist system meant that students and professors were ready to discuss all the issues of the day. Conservatism, to them, was not a sin or a heresy, but a possible worldview, all the more interesting in being condemned by the communists and despised by the Western left. Travelling around the countries of East and central Europe in those days, carrying the message of an alternative philosophy, was one of the most liberating experiences of my life, the dangers and privations notwithstanding. I came to believe that I might be right in theory, and not merely right in practice.

Not surprisingly, therefore, I have followed with interest and concern the developments since 1989, and recognise that the moment of liberation from the Soviet yoke was not simply the end of old problems, but also the beginning of new ones. It is about these new problems that I wish to speak, and about the situation of our continent today, as we endeavour to co-operate in resolving them.

Before 1989 our continent was divided between totalitarian socialism and free democracy, and although the left-wing intellectuals defended the first of those, they all lived, if they could, in the second. Today the division is not between different areas of our continent. It is a division between two conflicting outlooks. On the one hand there is the adherence to the nation state, with its language, institutions and religious inheritance. On the other hand there is the cosmopolitan vision of a trans-national order, a borderless economy and a universal law of human rights. Both outlooks grew from the religious conflicts of the seventeenth century and both came to fruition in the Enlightenment. And the tension between them is enduring and unresolved.

There is no way to understand our continent today if we do not recognise that it is an association of nation-states, each with its territory, customs, language and indigenous religions assets that define the loyalty of its residents and their shared sense of home. But we must also recognise that the legal and political institutions of our continent have turned in a cosmopolitan direction. This is less true of my country, perhaps. But it is certainly true of continental Europe; and it is particularly true of the former communist states. The law and jurisprudence of the European Courts enabled the former communist countries to fill the legal vacuum created by the Communist Party. And this in turn enabled them to receive and protect incoming investment and thereby to enter the global capitalist economy with relatively little friction, and also, alas, with far too little awareness of the social and cultural cost of it.

There is, at the heart of the European project, an agenda which was set without reference to the specific needs and values of the European nations. Regardless of their social and religious inheritance, the people of Europe are being pressured to recognise rights that derive from abstract ideas of freedom and autonomy, and which defy the norms of the indigenous religions: rights to abortion, surrogate birth, euthanasia and so on, which are inevitably controversial in countries that have depended for their cohesion on their religious inheritance. These rights form part of the worldview of the governing elite, who can legislate above the heads of sovereign governments. Moreover, the governments of the European nations have been asked to renounce the primary right of sovereign states, which is the right to determine who resides within their borders.

The freedom of movement provisions of the Treaty of Rome were conceived at a time when the signatories enjoyed a comparable standard of living, with more or less full employment and similar welfare systems. There was no temptation to move, save for the specific purposes of an existing job. Now, however, freedom of movement means a massive one-way shift of populations, out of the former communist countries, into the West, and in particular into Britain, whose government sets a very low barrier to entry. This is one cause of the Brexit crisis. But it has also had a serious demographic effect on the Vyegrad countries, which have lost many of the best and brightest of their young people, at a time when both economic take-off and defence against the Russian threat require a full cohort of the young and a full commitment to rebuilding the national economy.

Furthermore the dissolution of borders has made it all but impossible to maintain a national immigration policy. The EU has tried to gain control of the situation by distributing migrants according to a quota system. But Mrs Merkels open invitation to the Syrians, the influx on the Hungarian border, and the big business of people-smuggling in the Mediterranean have between them made such a policy unviable. The situation is especially alarming for the former communist countries for the very reason that communism made it both impossible, and in any case unattractive, to migrate into them from anywhere outside the Soviet sphere. Hence this unforeseen price of freedom has come as an enormous shock, both politically and psychologically. Paradoxically communism, although established as an international movement and claiming to abolish all sovereign boundaries, helped to preserve the nation state. For the nation was an enduring reality around which resistance could shape itself and, when combined with the powerful resurgence of Catholic faith in Poland, proved decisive in the overthrow of the communist tyranny.

Resistance to mass immigration has attracted the charge of racism and xenophobia from the EU, with moves to expel Hungarys Fidesz Party from the EPP, and even to expel Hungary itself from the European Union. This in turn has hardened Viktor Orbns government in its attitude, and led to growing resistance to immigration throughout the region. The issue has also been absorbed into the wider conflict, between the national and the international perspective, itself reaching back into the past of our continent and into the dark and difficult emotions that tore the continent apart during the 20th century. The result has been a sudden and radical change in the language and direction of political conflict throughout Europe, with the European elite condemning the populism of national movements, which in turn condemn the elitism of the European political class. This conflict has played itself out with increasing anger and confusion in my country, between the proponents and the opponents of Brexit. And it seems to me to be vital now both to understand what is at stake, and to work towards a resolution.

The charge of populism is levelled against movements for national independence and national renewal largely in order to discount the fact that they enjoy popular support. This is what we have seen in the response of liberals in Britain to the Brexit vote. A majority voted for Brexit; but you can discount their vote by describing it as populist. For there are two ways of appealing to the people indirectly, through the institutions that safeguard the liberal voice, and directly, by asking them what they think. Direct appeal to the people is rejected as dangerous. After all, they do not know what they think, or if they do know, it is because they think the wrong things. Only when guided and tempered by a liberal constitution can the people be trusted, and that means filtering their raw emotions though a fine mesh of liberal hesitations, so that only a harmless stream of sentiment trickles forth.

The same charge of populism is levelled at the Law and Justice Party in Poland, and at Fidesz in Hungary. Both are accused of making too direct an appeal to the sentiments of the people, and in particular to their sentiments of belonging. Ordinary people cling to forms of membership that are local, bounded and difficult to translate into bureaucratic norms. Their values are shaped by religion, family, language and national history, and they do not necessarily recognise the force of transnational obligations, or universal codes of human rights, especially when those codes are in direct conflict with the specific obligations of family and faith. Populism is increasingly being used as a term of abuse, to dismiss the appeal to this kind of sentiment, even though it is a sentiment without which ordinary people might find it difficult to recognise their political obligations.

It seems to me that the conflict between the left intelligentsia and human nature has shifted from the sphere of socialism versus capitalism to this new sphere, of enlightened liberalism versus residual nationalism. What the liberals condemn as populism is really the attempt to retain old and inherited sentiments of identity and belonging. And what the people condemn as elitism is really the enlightenment conception of a universal and borderless political order, in which conflicts supposedly vanish because their cause which is the competitive network of national loyalties has been swept away. The EU was founded by people moved by that enlightenment idea, and who saw nationalism as the force that had unleashed the century of European wars. Looking back on it, however, it is just as reasonable to see the idea of a universal and borderless form of politics as underlying the imprisonment of East and Central Europe by the communists. Nationalism of the German kind was certainly destructive; but so was internationalism of the Soviet kind. Why not recognise that, in themselves, neither is more destructive than the other, but that each can become destructive when wound into a totalitarian project in which dissent is not permitted and the people are no longer allowed to express their views?

What I find most interesting in the new confrontation, however, is that the intellectual left has again assumed the high ground, is not prepared to concede the democratic legitimacy of the movements that it dismisses as populist, and is determined to frustrate any attempt by those movements to establish themselves in government. The same annihilating rage that was directed against conservatives like myself in the 1970s and 1980s is being directed now against the supposed populists, and not surprisingly there is a growing tendency of the populists to give back as good as they get. The resulting rise in temperature is one of the factors behind a loss of confidence in the EU, which seems to have precipitated a conflict that it cannot manage. And it is a conflict that is revealed in all the rapid changes that our continent is now undergoing.

This conflict is particularly important for the post-communist countries, since the one thing they lacked in 1989 was a clear idea of what they are, and what unites the people in a body politic. The communists had an agenda, in which the people were conscripted to a cause that was clearly unachievable and in any case hopelessly out of date. They offered no other concept of identity, than the all-comprehending purpose of the communist millennium. All those factors that might have persuaded people to adhere to that purpose culture, art, music, religion, history had been driven underground, and the joyless surface of everyday life contained no promise of a future other than this one. Inevitably, therefore, the people were looking for a new politics of identity, something that would hold them together as a we. This was the one thing the EU was unable to provide. It gave them an avenue into the global economy, and a route away from their home, but no new way of belonging where they arrived. As the disappointments accumulated, it is the hope of belonging that beckons. Where is home, and who defines it? Global capitalism is no answer, since it merely voids the world of loyalties and puts everything, human relations included, on sale. This surely is what is legitimate in those old leftist criticisms: that the human heart has no real place in the global economy, the heart that so many of us observed in those who fought the communist tyranny in your countries and who hoped that, when the mask of dictatorship fell at last, the smiling face of the nation would be revealed beneath it.

My view is that this situation should be seen as an opportunity and not as a crisis. After thirty years of confusion the people of Eastern and central Europe are beginning to understand that they are heirs to two great achievements: on the one hand, the nation state as a form of social and political identity; on the other hand the Enlightenment conception of citizenship, in which each assumes the full responsibilities of social membership under a shared rule of law. The two achievements are forced into conflict with each other, in part because the EU wishes to dampen or even destroy the national idea. But properly understood they are mutually dependent. And this is the task now facing us all, and you in particular. We must recognise that, without national identity and the loyalty that stems from it, there is no way to build a society of citizens. Democracy and the rule of law are realities only if opposing sides can live with each other on terms. The great error of the communists was to eliminate opposition, to conscript the people into a unity that they had not chosen and were not allowed to question. The great benefit of democracy is that it makes opposition possible and also legitimate. But this has the consequence that, in a democracy, more than half the people at any moment might be living under a government that they did not choose, maybe a government that they hate. What makes that possible? Why do democracies not break down, under the pressure of popular dissent? The answer is simple: they dont break down because the loyalty of the citizen is not towards the government, but towards something higher, something that is shared between all the citizens, regardless of their political beliefs and inclinations. This higher thing is the nation, the entity to which we all belong, and which defines the first-person plural of democratic politics. Without this shared we it is impossible for democracies to endure, and it is precisely by destroying this we that the communists were able to retain their grip on power, ruling as a pure they of dictatorship.

It seems to me therefore that the so-called populists are right to emphasise the nation state as the fount of loyalty, and that their enlightened liberal opponents should acknowledge this, and cease to use the European institutions as a way to punish the governments that lean in this direction. And reciprocally those who wish to revive the national ideal, and to affirm the rights of national sovereignty, should listen to the voice of the liberal enlightenment, and accept that national sentiments must always be tempered by the recognition of others out there who do not and cannot share them. This, to my mind, defines the task before you today, which is one of reconciliation between two pressing needs: the need to affirm national sovereignty, and the need to conform to the universal standards of citizenship. These are the two great gifts of the European political inheritance, and they are mutually dependent. We should stand against those who wish to prise them apart so as to condemn one or the other of them as an offence against the people. After all, it is the people who have most to lose from any conflict between them, and the job of the politician is not to stir up conflict but to soothe it. It is my hope that we have arrived at the point when this will be possible. Then, at last, the poison administered by the communists will have been flushed from the system.

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Roger Scruton on national identity and the legacy of communism - The Conservative Woman

The word woke has quickly degenerated into a meaningless term of abuse. Nobody says I am woke these days, at least not seriously. Its like claiming to be a keen nanny-statist or bien-pensant.

At one level, then, wokeness exists only so that journalists like me and social media warriors on the center or right can fight it.

Its not just the word that has become hackneyed. The whole idea of being woke suddenly alert to racial or social injustice is not real, and never was, and therefore the movement against it is similarly fake.

Right-wingers have the same concept and call it redpilling; in both cases, it means a sort of lobotomized enlightenment for people who enjoy feeling aggrieved. Scratch the surface go beneath the endless viral spats between trolls on social media and you realize that nobody means what they are saying. Nobody is redpilled. And nobody, come to that, is woke.

This occurred to me the other day when I saw a clip of Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu explaining on British morning television why white people are not allowed to ask for evidence of racism against Meghan Markle. They dont have the lived experience of black people, said Shola, so they must agree that the Duchess of Sussex is a victim of bigotry end of. What crap, I thought to myself, as I felt the familiar righteous aggravation bubbling inside me. Then I realized that Ive met Shola: we did a podcast together ages ago about Donald Trump. Shola was quite combative during the recording, but sweetness and light when the microphones werent on. Im not sure she really believed what she was saying: its just her gig, her media market. There is a massive appetite for woke talking heads because media consumers are so hooked on the feelings of anger that they generate. Maybe I am wrong, but I dont believe that Shola, in her heart of hearts, is utterly convinced of the words she spouts about white privilege. Its a schtick that helps pay the bills. Shes like a stand-up comic who specializes in offending people. Except instead of being un-PC, she is ultra-PC, which is even more offensive to larger numbers of people.

The same thought strikes me when I look at social media. Many of my friends spend hours virtue-signaling (another word that is fast approaching redundancy) on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. But if I ever ask them about it, theyll explain that they only shared the sanctimonious meme because everyone in their office did, or they just thought that is what you have to do. They dont really believe all women, they just think thats what you say online. Its like theyre all agnostics in the Middle Ages. Its easier to repeat the litany than go against the grain.

Theres often a profit-motive, too. I know a woman (who shall remain nameless) who spends her time promoting her feminist bona fides on Instagram. She posts endless shots of herself with cod-motivational messages about her body shape, the #MeToo movement, or the importance of her orgasms. She used to be a close friend so I always found her Insta-feminism particularly cringe-inducing.

Then, at a wedding recently, we had a cheering, drunken rapprochement: we bonded over how awful Instagram is. She only does it, she said, because she is trying to find her way as an influencer one of the few career avenues open to cash-poor Gen X mummies in suburbia (now that is a feminist issue worth raising). The woke version of herself wasnt true: it was a digital career move.

Heres another example: I once did another podcast about the royals and mental health campaigning with the Telegraphs Bryony Gordon, who knows Prince Harry and is herself a mental health campaigner. I took the perhaps fogeyish line that the royals should probably not spend quite so much time talking about their struggles. Bryony disagreed, but politely. Like Shola, she was charming off-mic, before and after. We both seemed to understand that, while we may disagree, the media is just a game and no need for bad feelings. A few days later, I saw on Facebook that Bryony had written a post essentially calling me a **** for demeaning the mentally ill.

Again, I may be wrong, but I dont think that was the real Bryony. Thats the Facebook Bryony, the Bryony who is just developing her brand as a campaigning media personality. The real Bryony isnt truly woke. Shes rather nice, all said.

At some point the mask becomes the man, as in the story of the Happy Hypocrite. We are what we emote. If we spend our lives hectoring and censoring each other online, that will eventually bleed into everyday life.

But its useful sometimes to remember, as we all gorge on offense culture every day, that most people dont mean it and nobody is really woke.

Read more from the original source:
Nobody is woke - The Spectator USA

Laurence Fox says he enjoys to be mean to the wokies (Picture: BBC)

Actor Laurence Fox has rifled many features recently after claiming on Question Time that being called a white privileged man is racist.

His controversial comments continued when he revealed to The Delingpod podcast that he broke up with his too woke girlfriend over her opposing views on the Gillette advert last year.

He explained: I dont know how we ended up together.

It was a very short relationship. We were walking down the road and she was talking about how good the Gillette advert was. I just looked at her and went, Bye. Sorry, I cant do this with you.

The Gillette advert which addressed issues of toxic masculinity, bullying, sexual harassment and the objectification of women was celebrated widely.

But Fox felt it was too much and claims to have broken up with his partner because of their opposing opinions.

In November last year, Fox also admitted hes becoming increasingly intolerant due to his views.

He said: I say, Can we just get on and not be mean to each other? But I feel compelled to be mean to the wokies.

But what exactly does wokies mean?

The word wokie has been floating around in the past decade and prior to that describing anyone aware of social injustices.

But in the last few years, terms such as social justice warrior and wokies have been used derogatorily to poke fun at those sensitive to these issues.

According to Urban Dictionary, a wokie is someone who wants kudos for performing wokeness enlightenment.

It explains: A wokie is an individual who is woke, someone thatemitshigher grace and does not shy away from sharing his or her insights on the topic, regardless of the actualpossession of said knowledge.

While wokie is more of an insult, woke originated with a racially political end by Black Americans which makes it difficult to unpick from race.

It became a watchword around 2009 for the Black Lives Matter Movement a call to arms against the various racial injustices still occurring in the US and beyond.

Musician Erykah Badu is said to have brought the term alive in popular culture by singing I stay woke in the 2008 track, Master Teacher.

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Fox feels wokies play the race card too much.

Ironically, he claimed to be the victim of racism when he was called out for white privilege.

And yet he has lambasted minority groups which has been inferred by social media users as a thinly-veiled attempt at racism from his part.

He has since become a poster boy for anti-wokeness claiming that those enlightened on subjects of race and social injustice are now boring.

Despite his unpopular take, Fox received support from fellow controversial speaker Piers Morgan.

Similarly, Morgan has also claimed to be a victim of racism following comments from people calling him gammon.

Since all the outrage, Fox has claimed he would be taking a break from Twitter yesterday.

He tweeted: Right, super fun as all this has been, Im going to take a day off from winding up the wonderful wokies. Have a lovely day everyone.

He then resurfaced with various other tweets, one referring to himself as Wokey McWokeface.

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What does woke mean and what is a wokie? - Metro.co.uk

There is no such thing as a Good Demon.

Let me say that again:

In todays world, the high-fantasy genre is liberated to a point where writers, artists, and readers can explore every imaginable realm of possible existence, and that is an intimidating but wonderful thing. It is in high-fantasy where our imaginations run wild, where we humor all subjective definitions of macabre, grotesque, beautiful, brave, and bizarre. We can escape societys norms to validate thoughts and feelings, and we can make moral statements about our society and where it needs to go.

From multiverses strung together by Marvels anthologies of comic books to the allegorical Narnian plains from C.S. Lewiss Chronicles, The Walt Disney Company is no stranger to exposing its audience to high fantasy and the adventures that await. But no matter how free we let ourselves roam, no matter how mainstream high-fantasy may become, we must always keep the objective, established understanding of what is good and what is evil.

For example, Demons are evil. Angels are the ones that are good.

Disney Channels latest show, The Owl House, tells the story of a girl trapped in a demon realm where she will learn and use witchcraft while befriending an actual demon. The show follows in the footsteps of NetflixsDisenchantmentand FoxsLucifer. They present themselves with a foolishly arrogant prospective that drops everythingeven the barebones of age-old ideological definitions of good and evilinto the bin of high-fantasy make-believe, demoting the reality of Angels and Demons to harmless mythology.

Ive come to terms with the fact that 90% of Americas mainstream media has decided to operate outside of Judeo-Christian-centric norms for now. But, religion aside, there are boundaries you dont cross and will have major consequences. Im not talking about the wrath of some powerful Zeus-like being from above, Im talking about scores of kids being led astray at their own free will.

Related: Ex-Witch Warns Parents of Disneys New Demonic Show: Be Careful!

The trailer for Disney Channels The Owl House ends with the protagonist saying I know it looks a little bit differentBut if you look at it from a different perspective, its just like home.

We keep hearing this one, dont we? Keep an open mind! You might like it!

But, last I checked, getting your body and soul lost in a netherworld of chaos and horror with a manipulating demon and witch is not exactly the same thing as trying some super weird ethnic food at a friends house that even she doesnt like. There are limits to everything. Even for how open-minded you should be. And shows like The Owl House can cause major levels of confusion for the impressionable young minds it is geared towards.

Shows like The Owl Housemanipulate the idea of theres good in everyone and teach kids to let their guards down to demons and witches just because they may appear cute, benign, and sassy. They profess the same to hell with it contrarian nihilistic perspective to normal life and real spiritual evils as every other hipster artist on Tumblr.

Related: Is Disneys New Cartoon Teaching Kids How to Be Witches?

Disney XDs reboot of DuckTales rides the line of enlightenment perfectly while also dabbling in demon dimensions and magic. But heres the difference:DuckTalesmaintains the established boundaries of Good and Evil.

LikeThe Owl House, DuckTalesteaches kids not to be afraid to ask any questions or research any knowledge. But the difference in DuckTales is that they say, unapologetically, THIS IS EVIL! While the chief magic expert, Webby, may have a slightly unhealthy obsession with the ethereal realms, her eagerness comes from a desire to learn with an understanding of objective good vs. evil.

Now, is there goodness in every being? Yes.

Can everyone turn to good and be saved? Yes.

Webbys best friend, Leena, was a shadow manifested from the darkest evil. But Webby works constantly to pull Leena into the light. Her naivete causes her to be manipulated constantly by Leena, but her purity and her dedication to the light save Leena from the shadow realm. Rather than what some people think a person should do and surrender to their friends ways in the name of enlightenment.

Whenever spiritual nether-realms are mentioned inDuckTalesthey are always accompanied by three show tropes:

Do you see the difference? Sure, its fun to play with a little fake magic on TV, but it is not okay to tell kids its cool to befriend demons and get involved with straight witchcraft. That will only lead to more souls being led astray and lost to darkness.

There is no such thing as a good demon.

For those of you left thinking this, youre right. I agree. It is just a TV show. Kids are smart enough not to blindly emulate what they see on TV. But in that case, why dont we bring back gun use in cartoons and the good old hilariously violent slapstick Loony Tunes comedy?

Seriously, the world is better off with cartoon bad guys carrying and firing real-looking guns than with a cartoon good guy carrying a cutesy-looking demon.

Read the original here:
OpEd: Disney Crossed the Line with Demon-Centered TV Show "The Owl House" - Inside the Magic

Well, 2020 officially kickstarted a new decade and with it, speculations on what the future promises. It has only been a couple of weeks, and yet we find ourselves witnessing changes on a global scale. Video games, much like real life, convey the same level of change, mostly depicting our reality in a darker and bleaker fashion. Deus Ex: Human Revolution is one title that comes across as a pure model, more than most games on the market today. After revisiting this game recently in my spare time, Ive come to realize that a lot of elements mimic that of our inevitable future. So how does this cyberpunk action RPG foretell the direction in which humanity is going? Well, were here to take a look and make our analysis.

The most noticeable first pick would be the increasing rise of augmentations and prosthetics. By recent analysis, 7.00% of the global population is categorized as being born with a defect. One of the most common is that of congenital amputation, a birth defect of lacking a limb or two. As with the growth of this percentage, prosthetics are more and more massively produced. However, while this is nothing unheard of, science is continuing to innovate with prosthetics much more than before. Innovations in the field of robotics opened up new frontiers.

The possibility of commanding enhanced prosthetics with a mere thought was something unheard of. Companies like Open Bionic, Cyberdyne, and DEKA are some of the most well known, that continue to experiment and research the possibilities of prosthetics. Much like the protagonist of Deus Ex, these sorts of bionics are set to evolve with the coming tide. A chance for all to live a regular life, despite of their defect.

Deus Exs most recurring theme is that of Transhumanism. If by any chance, you havent come to terms with this movement, we will indulge you. The simplest explanation on the matter is that basically, Transhumanism is a philosophical movement that supports human enhancements. In Human Revolution, players are introduced to a variety of companies, which deal in research and manufacturing of augmentations.

Sarif Industries is one such company that mimics that of Japans Cyberdyne. While they, unlike their video game counterpart, do not openly support this movement, they strive for the same goals. A better, faster, stronger future for all. Then they are companies like BiChip in Denmark, which are promoting their chip implants. Now with the idea of reading medical records, identification, and even connecting to wifi. Their most recent update was a built-in cryptocurrency reader, allowing payment via microchip.

The BBC made a lengthy article on this topic in late 2019, discussing how everyday items, such as car keys, are now portable via this method. Who knows, maybe in time, these things will become mandatory. And with more users each year, who knows, perhaps we will all be soon connected by a much similar AI algorithm. However, with each significant change, humanity rebels, and the case is the same in the game.

One of the biggest things that marked 2019, in terms of global trends, was civil unrest. The Arab protests, France, Catalonia, Latin America, and most notably, Hong Kong. These protests were mostly to show dislike of the current regimes in these countries. Yet, if people are more open about protesting then ever before, who says that it cant happen when it comes to Transhumanism. As shown in Deus Ex, people are afraid of rapid change, especially at its climax.

In the game, the epilogue focuses on the corruption of augmentation chips. Augmented humans become hostile and openly attack non-augmented ones. In the wake of such a disaster, how could humanity not step up and present their concerns? Governments are known to manipulate their countries into unspeakable acts, and humankind, on countless occasions, fights back. In the wake of significant evolution, especially one that is rapid and forced upon, people also tend to revolt. Much like in the game, it will inevitably lead to that. The only question is, will it resolve more peacefully, or turn into all-out urban chaos?

We are going slightly back to the topic of robotics, specifically Artificial Intelligence. By now, everybody knows that it all started with Alan Turing. A man who left a legacy behind that shaped the future generations and is still continuing to evolve to this day. From primitive computers to elaborate algorithms that think on their own, AI will play a prominent role in the future, that much is certain. When it comes to global media, AI has now evolved to a point where it has access to all information. In the game, a certain anchorwoman shows our protagonist the power of the news industry and how she feeds off different data.

Eliza Cassan is the primary example of how AI would work in the future. As an artificial intelligence, she displays uncanny skills of gathering news to peak precision. She is more than just a simple machine, demonstrating compassion and feelings, just like any individual. And like any human being, can lie, which she does on occasion to the protagonist. News media also relies on this a lot, and this card tends to be played, now more than ever.

The final piece of proof comes not in what one can see, but what one can feel. The primary focus in Deus Ex: Human Revolution is powerplay, be that of the Illuminati, or major corporations. Casting a shadow and rising, way above their respective governments, one cannot help but feel that there is a larger scheme here. While it is no secret agent villain scheming, its most definitely sinister. Call it superstition, or a conspiracy. But one thing is clear. Monopolies of large industries tower over government positions.

And while seats of power rise and fall over a single night, major players with vast industries standstill. You need not look far from Sarif Industry, Darrow Industries, Tai Yong Medical, and VersaLife. Examples of in-game organizations that pull all the string in the Human Revolution. And yet, there always seems like there is a third hand guiding and ushering new ideas and power seats. While there are other games that represent what humanity could be like, Human Revolution manages that way too realistic. A possibility, or near-perfect example of what the world could look like?

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How Deus Ex: Human Revolution Perfectly Predicts The Future - Fiction Talk

Indian elders have a long list of favorite dialogues that they use to excercise outdated notions of patriarchy today. Ladki Haath Se Nikal Jayegi is one that is dearest to them. Be it a family function, or a regular conversation at home, many of us have often had to hear this phrase. From preferences to mannerisms, almost every aspect of our personality that is not up to the standards set by society is targetted. The aunties have made a checklist and they judge all your actions accordingly. Wearing a dress of a length that they consider short or hanging out with guys or speaking loudly or maybe voicing your opinions in public are some of the misdemeanors on that list. If you tick any of these boxes, then get ready to being called a spoilt girl.

Sharvani Sinha, a resident of Noida, currently studying at MIT, Bangalore tells SheThePeople.TV how she faced taunts for hanging out with boys, I have always been into sports. While growing up, a lot of my female friends stopped playing sports probably because of puberty. But I did not stop playing. So the only people left to play with were guys. As a result of which I used to play sports with guys and started hanging out with them a lot more. This drew a considerable amount of attention from the aunties. The biased mindset that plagues our society portrays budding sportswomen in poor light. Interacting with guys and maintaining a friendly relationship is completely healthy and doesnt mean that any girl has slipped out of her parents control.

Read Also:Kajol Srinivasan: Defying Gender Stereotypes Through Stand Up

Girls in remote areas especially are confined by the boundaries set by their families. Its a norm to get them married at a tender age and they are expected to start families in the early twenties, thus forfeiting their careers and dreams. Imparting education to girls or letting them do jobs often implies losing control on them since they will become more confident individuals. Sandhya, a matriculate residing in a village in UP, working as a salesgirl to financially support her family, says that she was looked down upon by the neighbors and relatives as she drove a moped to commute to work.

However, gendered restrictions dont just limit girls outside of their homes, they do it inside them as well. And girls who challenge such stigmas have to pay the price for it. Apoorva Pant, a Delhi University student pursuing Economics claims that her straightforwardness often landed her up in trouble. She speaks her mind boldly which many elders disapprove of. We are still stuck with a backward mindset that expects girls to abide by the behavioral stereotypes society has framed. Patriarchy feels intimidated by girls who speak their mind, because it knows that they are challenging and question the norms burdened on them, instead of enduring them in silence.

Another Delhi University student, Aadhyaa Singh has had to hear the above mentioned warning often issued by society to Indian parents because of the choice of her clothes. She says, Ive always worn clothes that made me feel comfortable and my parents have never stopped me. However, I had once heard a relative of mine asking my mother to keep a check on my activities since her experienced vision sensed something wrong in the way I used to dress up.

Poonam, who is a mother of an 18-year-old daughter shares that she never put restrictions on how her child presented herself. Ive always stood by her choices and have defended her actions in front of the family members who criticized her. If shes right then nobody can force her to do otherwise, says the homemaker.

Read Also:Lets Break These Weird Stereotypes About Women

With changing times, it is necessary to transform these age-old perceptions. Our clothes dont define our disposition. Befriending guys doesnt reflect upon our characters. Being too loud or confident doesnt snatch away our femininity. And education can never spoil us. All of us have the right to lead our lives on our terms! Which is why society needs to retire this phrase of Ladki haath se nikal jayegi and let young girls just be.

Saavriti is an intern with SheThePeople.TV

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Ladki Haath Se Nikal Jayegi: When Will Society Retire This Phrase? - SheThePeople

Managers at Invershin Hall are running a Health and Wellbeing Festival.

Feel Good Feel Fit for 2020 started last Thursday and is running for six weeks until February 2

The festival has evolved from a successful block of ceilidh fitness sessions run at the hall last year.

Hall treasurer Elissa Steven said: We organised another six week block of ceildih dancing which started on January 16.

We thought we would build on it and turn it into a Health and Wellbeing Festival.

The festival got off to a good start with 14 people turning up for the first ceilidh dancing session.

,It wasa fantastic said Elissa. Everyone had a brilliant time, getting fit and smiling!

Last Sunday saw a Walk for All at the Falls of Shin and further events are planned.

These incude an outdoor adventure at Ferrycroft - a cycle, walk or jog to tie in with the Big Bike Revival funded by Cycling UK.

Further family walks are on the programme as well as a pop-up health cafe, yoga, circuits and an excercise class.

Hall committee members are also organising a holistic eveningat which it is hoped to have various treatments.

Visit the halls Facebook page for further information.

See the article here:

Invershin hall launches health and wellbeing festival - Northern Times

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It started late last year in a seafood market in the sprawling Chinese city of Wuhan. A mysterious virus previously unknown to science has since left six people dead and hundreds more sick. Cases have spread to Japan, South Korea and Thailand as Chinese authorities confirm that the illness, which causes pneumonia-like symptoms, can be passed from person to person.

China's President Xi Jinping has vowed to do everything possible to contain the outbreak. But, with hundreds of millions of people preparing to travel for the nation's biggest annual holiday, Lunar New Year, countries are scrambling to screen their borders, including Australia.

By January 21, the US confirmed the virus had spread to America, and the World Health Organisation was convening an emergency meeting to consider how big a threat the outbreak poses.

So what is a coronavirus, how does it spread and is this the world's next SARS?

Travellers wear face masks in Beijing. China as reported a sharp rise in the number of people infected with coronavirus.Credit:AP

Coronaviruses are a broad family of viruses that cause respiratory illness. They are mostly found in animals only six have previously been identified in humans including SARS-CoV, which led to the deadly SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome)outbreak in 2003.

This new virus brings that tally to seven. Known as 2019-nCov (for novel coronavirus), the strain emerged in December, and has been linked to a seafood market in the capital of China's central Hubei province, Wuhan. The market has since been closed.

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Symptoms of the virus range from coughing, fever and a sore throat to more serious complications like pneumonia. At least four people diagnosed with the illness have died and many remain in a serious condition.

Scientists have unlocked the genetic code of the virus in "record time" - with cooperation from China - according to Robert Booy from the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance at the University of Sydney. But it is still unclear how easily and rapidly the illness will spread.

Experts are cautious when assessing its danger, noting so far other known coronaviruses have a higher mortality rate.

Professor Booy says about 10 per cent of people with SARS 800 died and MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) has proven even more deadly, with about 35 per cent of cases resulting in death.

On January 22, the Morrison government said there had been no diagnosed cases in Australia so far, despite a number of false alarms. That includes a man in Queensland who was temporarily held in qurantine for testing after he became ill following recent travel to Wuhan.

None of the known cases so far world-wide have involved children and at least one of the initial three people who had died also had an underlying disease, the government said in a statement.

The Coronavirus seen under an electron miscroscope.Credit:AFP

Coronaviruses are commonly carried by bats and then passed onto humans through mammals sold at live animal markets, says Professor Booy. Animals appear the most likely cause of this outbreak too.

Previously, Chinese authorities had claimed it could only be passed from animal to humans. But it's been reported at least two of those infected never set foot in Wuhan during the outbreak. Zhong Nanshan, a top Chinese expert investigating the virus, told state media they had caught it from family members and medical workers had also been infected. He warned it was now certainly a "human-to-human transmission phenomenon".

While Wuhan is believed to be the epicentre of the virus, it has spread to other Chinese cities including the capital, Beijing. Four cases have been reported outside China so far, in Japan, Thailand and South Korea. On January 21, Queensland authorities revealed they had quarantined a man for testing in Brisbane, after his recent travel to Wuhan.

The next three weeks or so will be critical to the world's understanding of the virus, says infectious disease specialist at the Australian National University Sanjaya Senanayake. But so far he says the outbreak has been milder than when SARS exploded onto the scene. Still, it has hit at the worst possible time for China amid Lunar New Year celebrations.

"So many people will be travelling, including here to Australia," Associate Professor Senanayake says. "I don't think we need to panic but I'm more worried now we're learning people outside the infamous seafood market have been infected."

Some experts predict the severity of the outbreak will depend on how many people, on average, a person with the virus can infect. Senanayake says he expects it will play out in a similar fashion to SARS people will catch it the way they catch a cold, from contact with infected people, animals or contaminated surfaces.

"With SARS, there wasn't one group of people affected but how people reacted did depend on their health," he says. "Fortunately, in this case, more people are getting milder cases."

On January 22, the World Health Organisation will meet to decide just that weighing up whether or not to declare the outbreak a global health crisis, such as they did during the start of Ebola in the Congo and the emergence of Zika virus in the Americas in 2016.

Chinese authorities have so far maintained the outbreak is"still preventable and controllable" but the country will ramp up monitoring over the Lunar New Year. On state media, Zhong said there was no danger of a repeat of the deadly SARS epidemic so long as precautions were taken.

Zhong Nanshan, a respiratory expert, confirmed the virus could be passed between humans but said China's quarantine procedures could still contain its spread.Credit:AP

President Xi has instructed his government to promptly release information on the virus and deepen international co-operation. Many countries have begun screening for the virus at airports, including US and now Australia.

On social media, people are posting prevention advice such as wearing masks and washing hands. Some have cancelled their travel plans for Lunar New Year. Senanayake stresses masks are only effective at blocking airborne viruses for the first few hours and should be changed regularly.

The number of cases may well be much higher than official numbers - the Imperial College of London estimates it's likely there are at least 1700 cases, when those undiagnosed are included.

"It's winter in China, a lot of these [cases] will seem like coughs and colds," Senanayake says.

While communication was notoriously sparse from China during the SARS crisis, Senanayake says it has been markedly better this time around, and international screening and quarantine methods have also improved.

"Still we [the world] are vulnerable to a superbug or virus, and even this could mutate at any time."

The news the virus may have already reached Australia comes as no surprise to experts, who say its steady influx of Chinese travellers make it vulnerable to such an outbreak. But, fresh from a meeting with state and territory health officials, the country's chief medical officer Brendan Murphy said the risk to Australians still remains low and well-established mechanisms were in place if it increased. At Sydney airport, where three direct flights from Wuhan arrive each week, passengers will be met by biosecurity officers asking if they have any symptoms.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison said on Tuesday that the government had raised the travel advice for those travelling to Wuhan to level 2, urging them to excercise a high degree of caution.

At the Centre for InternationalSecurity Studies, Adam Kamradt-Scott says Australia's public health system is well-placed to care for anyone infected but only international cooperation would see the virus properly contained.

Given that there are direct flights between Sydney and Wuhan, which is currently the epicentre of the virus, there is a reasonable chance that we might see cases emerge in Australia."

With Rachel Clun and Dana McCauley

Sherryn Groch is the explainer reporter for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.

More here:

What is coronavirus and how worried should we be? - Sydney Morning Herald

Veganism is becoming increasingly popular.

In the past few years, several celebrities have gone vegan, and a wealth of vegan products have appeared in stores.

However, you may still be curious about what this eating pattern involves and what you can and cant eat on a vegan diet.

This article tells you everything you need to know about veganism.

The term vegan was coined in 1944 by a small group of vegetarians who broke away from the Leicester Vegetarian Society in England to form the Vegan Society.

They chose not to consume dairy, eggs, or any other products of animal origin, in addition to refraining from meat, as do vegetarians.

The term vegan was chosen by combining the first and last letters of vegetarian.

Veganism is currently defined as a way of living that attempts to exclude all forms of animal exploitation and cruelty, be it from food, clothing, or any other purpose.

Vegans generally choose to avoid animal products for one or more of the following reasons.

Ethical vegans strongly believe that all creatures have the right to life and freedom.

Therefore, they oppose ending a conscious being's life simply to consume its flesh, drink its milk, or wear its skin especially because alternatives are available.

Ethical vegans are also opposed to the psychological and physical stress that animals may endure as a result of modern farming practices.

For instance, ethical vegans deplore the small pens and cages in which many livestock live and often rarely leave between birth and slaughter.

What's more, many vegans speak out against the farming industrys practices, such as the grinding of live male chicks by the egg industry or the force-feeding of ducks and geese for the foie gras market.

Ethical vegans may demonstrate their opposition by protesting, raising awareness, and choosing products that dont involve animal agriculture.

Some people choose veganism for its potential health effects.

For example, plant-based diets may reduce your risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, and premature death (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

Lowering your intake of animal products may likewise reduce your risk of Alzheimers disease or dying from cancer or heart disease (6, 7, 8, 9, 10).

Some also choose veganism to avoid the side effects linked to the antibiotics and hormones used in modern animal agriculture (11, 12, 13).

Finally, studies consistently link vegan diets to a lower body weight and body mass index (BMI). Some people may choose these diets to lose weight (14, 15, 16).

People may also choose to avoid animal products because of the environmental impact of animal agriculture.

A 2010 United Nations (UN) report argued that these products generally require more resources and cause higher greenhouse gas emissions than plant-based options (17).

For instance, animal agriculture contributes to 65% of global nitrous oxide emissions, 3540% of methane emissions, and 9% of carbon dioxide emissions (18).

These chemicals are considered the three principal greenhouse gasses involved in climate change.

Furthermore, animal agriculture tends to be a water-intensive process. For example, 5505,200 gallons (1,70019,550 liters) of water are needed to produce 1 pound (0.5 kg) of beef (19, 20).

Thats up to 43 times more water than is needed to produce the same amount of cereal grains (20).

Animal agriculture can also lead to deforestation when forested areas are burned for cropland or pasture. This habitat destruction is thought to contribute to the extinction of various animal species (18, 21).

Prominent types of this lifestyle include:

Vegans avoid all foods of animal origin. These include:

Moreover, vegans avoid any animal-derived ingredients, such as albumin, casein, carmine, gelatin, pepsin, shellac, isinglass, and whey.

Foods containing these ingredients include some types of beer and wine, marshmallows, breakfast cereals, gummy candies, and chewing gum.

Avoiding animal products doesnt consign you to veggies and tofu alone.

In fact, many common dishes are already vegan or can be adjusted easily.

Some examples include bean burritos, veggie burgers, tomato pizzas, smoothies, nachos with salsa and guacamole, hummus wraps, sandwiches, and pasta dishes.

Meat-based entres are generally swapped for meals containing the following:

You can replace dairy products with plant milks, scrambled eggs with scrambled tofu, honey with plant-based sweeteners like molasses or maple syrup, and raw eggs with flax or chia seeds.

In addition, vegans tend to consume a variety of whole grains, as well as a wide array of fruits and vegetables (23, 24).

Finally, you can also choose from an ever-growing selection of ready-made vegan products, including vegan meats, fortified plant milks, vegan cheeses, and desserts.

However, these highly processed products may be loaded with additives, oils, and artificial ingredients.

Vegans are individuals who avoid animal products for ethical, health, or environmental reasons or a combination of the three.

Instead, they eat various plant foods, including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and products made from these foods.

If youre curious about this eating pattern, it can be easier to transition to veganism than you might think. However, you may want to consider supplements to ensure youre getting all the nutrients your body needs.

Original post:

What Is Veganism, and What Do Vegans Eat?