This sentiment, once the very essence of America as an ideal, would now be regarded as dangerously radical.
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CASTLE ANGER
Like a legend the river flows
under willow leaves,
past a castle called
Anger, Gniew —
In the flooded meadow,
willows’ silver-green,
where the souls from Anger
might have climbed into peace.
And those who are now
root and wood and leaf,
did they ever think
it would be forgotten
who lost and who won —
The natives of these
Pomeranian hills
disappeared long ago
into a forest of spike-helmet
shadows. Only a fragment
of their name survives,
rustling like a sudden wind.
Legend, you are too kind.
Oh willow, willow,
the dead in your arms,
their souls’ wet torn silks.
~ Oriana
Gniew Castle
RYSZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI ON BORDERS
“European landscape: fortifications, defense walls, forts, fortresses, watchtowers, bunkers, military roads, barriers, checkpoints, borders. We see limes [Latin for boundary, e.g. limes Imperii Romani; cf “limits”] being built everywhere, made stronger, guarded ever more diligently, dividing the continent since the beginning of time.
We won’t find anything like it in the history of Africa, or in its landscape. The space is open, free, nondelineated, undefended, unrestricted.” ~ Lapidarium IV, tr by Oriana
Hadrian’s Wall, begun in
122 c.e.
Mary:
Like the castle walls in the poem, the walls left by old, long fallen empires like Rome and China have managed to defend nothing, to preserve nothing but memories "rustling like a sudden wind," ghosts, and fragments of old old names. Perhaps we should be taking down these walls — physical and mental, that stand between cultures, nations, tribes, and all the splintered groups we sort ourselves into. They haven't served us well.
Building new ones, designed to keep some out and others in, some down and others set over them, is probably the worst possible thing we could be doing. Short memories, fears of threats posed by those seen as “Others”— clinging to primitive, tribal ways of thinking, can only bring catastrophe. Again. A lesson it seems difficult to learn, and difficult to remember.
Defensive walls at Avila, Spain
LIFE'S MOST IMPORTANT QUESTION: WHAT PAIN DO YOU WANT IN YOUR LIFE?
~ “If I ask you, “What do you want out of life?” and you say something like, “I want to be happy and have a great family and a job I like,” it’s so ubiquitous that it doesn’t even mean anything.
A more interesting question, a question that perhaps you’ve never considered before, is what pain do you want in your life? What are you willing to struggle for? Because that seems to be a greater determinant of how our lives turn out.
Everybody wants to have an amazing job and financial independence — but not everyone wants to suffer through 60-hour work weeks, long commutes, obnoxious paperwork, to navigate arbitrary corporate hierarchies and the blasé confines of an infinite cubicle hell. People want to be rich without the risk, without the sacrifice, without the delayed gratification necessary to accumulate wealth.
Everybody wants to have great sex and an awesome relationship — but not everyone is willing to go through the tough conversations, the awkward silences, the hurt feelings and the emotional psychodrama to get there.
happiness requires struggle. The positive is the side effect of handling the negative. You can only avoid negative experiences for so long before they come roaring back to life.
At the core of all human behavior, our needs are more or less similar. Positive experience is easy to handle. It’s negative experience that we all, by definition, struggle with. Therefore, what we get out of life is not determined by the good feelings we desire but by what bad feelings we’re willing and able to sustain to get us to those good feelings.
People want to start their own business or become financially independent. But you don’t end up a successful entrepreneur unless you find a way to appreciate the risk, the uncertainty, the repeated failures, and working insane hours on something you have no idea whether will be successful or not.
People want a partner, a spouse. But you don’t end up attracting someone amazing without appreciating the emotional turbulence that comes with weathering rejections, building the sexual tension that never gets released, and staring blankly at a phone that never rings. It’s part of the game of love. You can’t win if you don’t play.
What determines your success isn’t “What do you want to enjoy?” The question is, “What pain do you want to sustain?” The quality of your life is not determined by the quality of your positive experiences but the quality of your negative experiences. And to get good at dealing with negative experiences is to get good at dealing with life.
Sometimes I ask people, “How do you choose to suffer?” These people tilt their heads and look at me like I have twelve noses. But I ask because that tells me far more about you than your desires and fantasies. Because you have to choose something. You can’t have a pain-free life. It can’t all be roses and unicorns. And ultimately that’s the hard question that matters. Pleasure is an easy question. And pretty much all of us have similar answers. The more interesting question is the pain. What is the pain that you want to sustain?
That answer will actually get you somewhere. It’s the question that can change your life. It’s what makes me me and you you. It’s what defines us and separates us and ultimately brings us together.
For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician — a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up on stage playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling. This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end. The fantasizing continued up through college, even after I dropped out of music school and stopped playing seriously. But even then it was never a question of if I’d ever be up playing in front of screaming crowds, but when. I was biding my time before I could invest the proper amount of time and effort into getting out there and making it work. First, I needed to finish school. Then, I needed to make money. Then, I needed to find the time. Then… and then nothing.
Despite fantasizing about this for over half of my life, the reality never came. And it took me a long time and a lot of negative experiences to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it.
I was in love with the result — the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I’m playing — but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all.
The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit. The broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling 40 pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car. It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile-high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the top.
I wanted the reward and not the struggle. I wanted the result and not the process. I was in love not with the fight but only the victory. And life doesn’t work that way.
Who you are is defined by the values you are willing to struggle for. People who enjoy the struggles of a gym are the ones who get in good shape. People who enjoy long workweeks and the politics of the corporate ladder are the ones who move up it.
This is the most simple and basic component of life: our struggles determine our successes. So choose your struggles wisely, my friend.” ~
I agree that you have to enjoy the process — and the process, whether it is the so-called “creative process” or working out at the gym, is by no means 100% joy. There are always plenty of headaches and difficulties. Any teacher can talk for hours about the troubles you encounter while teaching — and yet outstanding teachers take such joy in teaching that they literally live for it. Or take any scientist who has spent years exploring a theory that ultimately had to be abandoned.
Examples can be multiplied, but only the details differ. Ultimately, you either enjoy the process and are willing to put up with the negative aspects of it — or you are too preoccupied with the outcome to make an honest effort. I agree: we are defined by the struggle, by the pain we are willing to endure.
Van Gogh: Houses at Auvers, June 1890
“Willing to endure,” however, does not quite equal to “want.” I realize that the author wanted a provocative title. But it’s our unconscious that decides. Funny, recently I had a dream in which someone said, “You don’t plan to become a father; you become a father and plan from there.” Somehow I finished this statement with “You don’t plan to buy a house; you buy a house and plan from there.”
I'm not saying that these are absolute truths, but intuitively they make some sense. No one would have a child based on logical reasoning. Likewise, if you start thinking about the huge expense of buying a house, you may become paralyzed. But your unconscious will push you one way or another. To go against that deep urge would mean a lifelong misery.
Van Gogh: Houses at Auvers, June 1890
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INTROVERSION AND EXTRAVERSION: NOT OPPOSITES?
~ "Jennifer Grimes posits that introversion is not the opposite of extroversion, but that they are two different traits altogether. And she proposes something that has come up here from time to time: That introversion actually is on the autism scale.
Grimes' thesis explains that if you take each of the factors this new model proposes and follow it along a continuum to their most extreme expressions, they correlate with the widely used Baron-Cohen Autism Spectrum Quotient.
Depending on how much we have of each factor (and how they interact with other personality traits), we can be simply introverted or, moving along the continuum, have Asperger's syndrome or, moving further yet, have autism.
Consider, for example, that many of us tend to think slowly and are not quick at communicating. At the introvert level, no big deal. Take that communication difficulty and move it along the scale Grimes proposes and you get to Asperger's and then autism.
Same with our tendency to focus deeply: At the healthy end of the scale that can be perseverance. Take it further, and you hit perseveration, which is not so good.
Grimes suspects Aron's sensitivity theory is outside of introversion. "That sounds like it belongs more in openness, the tendency to become frazzled and overwhelmed coupled with physical sensitivity is its own thing."
If introversion requires its own scale, it follows that extroversion does too. And if autism is on one far end of the introversion scale, what's on the far end of an extroversion scale? Narcissism? Exhibitionism? Lady Gaga?” ~
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-introverts-corner/201104/theory-about-introversion-extroversion-and-autism
Solitary beaches don't strike introverts as "lonely." Photo: Ed Byrne
Solitary beaches don't strike introverts as "lonely." Photo: Ed Byrne
Oriana:
I still think the essence of the difference between extraverts and introverts lies in different sensitivity to stimulation and different degrees of resting arousal. It’s about the reduction versus augmentation of incoming stimuli, first suggested by A. Petrie in 1967. Introverts are augmenters, and are easily overstimulated by loud sounds, bright lights, excess speed, chaos (aka “bedlam”), too many people talking at once. Extraverts are reducers, chronically under-stimulated and easily bored; they crave stimulation.
I still think the essence of the difference between extraverts and introverts lies in different sensitivity to stimulation and different degrees of resting arousal. It’s about the reduction versus augmentation of incoming stimuli, first suggested by A. Petrie in 1967. Introverts are augmenters, and are easily overstimulated by loud sounds, bright lights, excess speed, chaos (aka “bedlam”), too many people talking at once. Extraverts are reducers, chronically under-stimulated and easily bored; they crave stimulation.
Eysenck stated this in terms of “arousal.” Introverts have a higher baseline level of arousal.
~ “Eysenck believed that the difference between extroverts and introverts was their level of arousal. This means how stimulated and responsive they become to their surroundings.
He proposed that the level of arousal for extroverts is tremendously lower, so they must seek more stimulating activities to be at the normal state of arousal. This is why they seek adventure and the company of others.
On the other hand, introverts have a higher level of arousal, so it doesn’t take as much to raise it to the normal state. This is why the adventure extroverts pursue may be overwhelming for them, so they would rather be alone.” ~
Others have commented that introverts get their energy from being alone. They also like to think, to analyze everything. Contrary to stereotype, some introverts become charismatic public speakers or performers (based on my experience, feeling in control is the key).
I’ve met introverts who have excellent social skills and deep empathy, so I am not sure that I’d want to go near autism here. Sure, introverts can concentrate in depth on small details, and work for hours in solitude — in fact that’s their preferred mode, the way they “pursue their bliss” — and that’s a similarity, at least on the surface.
Likewise, both introverts and autistics tend to love animals and tend to prefer routine to novelty and risk-taking. But again, this may relate to sensitivity to stimulation and to how easily a person is overwhelmed by strong stimulation. Thus, introverts can enjoy company for a while, especially if it’s intellectually stimulating — but then have to be alone to recuperate. Too much stimulation exhausts them, and that includes social stimulation. I agree with Aron that to be happy, an introvert needs to avoid overstimulation.
It’s also been suggested that introversion belongs more on the spectrum of imagination and creativity, of having a richer inner life.
Mary:
I agree that introversion has more to do with sensitivity to stimulation than with any relation to autism. With autism there is no connection to others in terms of understanding and empathy...eye contact is avoided, and there doesn’t seem to be an understanding that the other is also a self in the same way you are a self.
Yes, autism brings great difficulty with overstimulation, so that even mild stimulation can be overwhelming and intolerable, and the introvert may also find that their sensitivity can make overstimulation unpleasant. But the introvert may simply move back, withdraw for a respite, not become so overwhelmed they are not able to function. It's a matter of levels and degrees, and of beginning from very different bases.
The autistic can’t connect and refuses connection, while the introvert may connect so powerfully that it becomes exhausting and they need some respite. They don’t shut things out but are maybe so wide open, so without defensive walls and filters, they get “bowled over” by the intensity of their sensations. The autistic can’t get over the wall; the introvert may need a kind of levee or floodgate to regulate, not stop, sensation.
“The concentration camps, by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one. His death merely set a seal on the fact that he had never existed.” ~ Hannah Arendt
Oriana:
What struck me here was the phrase "death as the end of a fulfilled life." So much depends on what a person has managed to contribute. And I'm reminded here of the almost-commandment: “You always have something to give.”
What struck me here was the phrase "death as the end of a fulfilled life." So much depends on what a person has managed to contribute. And I'm reminded here of the almost-commandment: “You always have something to give.”
*
“Give, share, lose—lest we die unbloomed.” ~ Allen Ginsberg
WHY PLANTS THRIVE AROUND CHERNOBYL
~ “Chernobyl has become a byword for catastrophe. The 1986 nuclear disaster, recently brought back into the public eye by the hugely popular TV show of the same name, caused thousands of cancers, turned a once populous area into a ghost city, and resulted in the setting up of an exclusion zone 2600km² in size.
But Chernobyl’s exclusion zone isn’t devoid of life. Wolves, boars and bears have returned to the lush forests surrounding the old nuclear plant. And when it comes to vegetation, all but the most vulnerable and exposed plant life never died in the first place, and even in the most radioactive areas of the zone, vegetation was recovering within three years.
Humans and other mammals and birds would have been killed many times over by the radiation that plants in the most contaminated areas received. So why is plant life so resilient to radiation and nuclear disaster?
In animals [cell damage by radiation] is often fatal, because their cells and systems are highly specialized and inflexible. Think of animal biology as an intricate machine in which each cell and organ has a place and purpose, and all parts must work and cooperate for the individual to survive. A human cannot manage without a brain, heart or lungs.
Plants, however, develop in a much more flexible and organic way. Because they can’t move, they have no choice but to adapt to the circumstances in which they find themselves. Rather than having a defined structure as an animal does, plants make it up as they go along. Whether they grow deeper roots or a taller stem depends on the balance of chemical signals from other parts of the plant and the “wood wide web”, as well as light, temperature, water and nutrient conditions.
Critically, unlike animal cells, almost all plant cells are able to create new cells of whatever type the plant needs. This is why a gardener can grow new plants from cuttings, with roots sprouting from what was once a stem or leaf.
All of this means that plants can replace dead cells or tissues much more easily than animals, whether the damage is due to being attacked by an animal or to radiation.
And while radiation and other types of DNA damage can cause tumors in plants, mutated cells are generally not able to spread from one part of the plant to another as cancers do, thanks to the rigid, interconnecting walls surrounding plant cells. Nor are such tumors fatal in the vast majority of cases, because the plant can find ways to work around the malfunctioning tissue.
Interestingly, in addition to this innate resilience to radiation, some plants in the Chernobyl exclusion zone seem to be using extra mechanisms to protect their DNA, changing its chemistry to make it more resistant to damage, and turning on systems to repair it if this doesn’t work. Levels of natural radiation on the Earth’s surface were much higher in the distant past when early plants were evolving, so plants in the exclusion zone may be drawing upon adaptations dating back to this time in order to survive.
Life is now thriving around Chernobyl. Populations of many plant and animal species are actually greater than they were before the disaster.
Given the tragic loss and shortening of human lives associated with Chernobyl, this resurgence of nature may surprise you. Radiation does have demonstrably harmful effects on plant life, and may shorten the lives of individual plants and animals. But if life-sustaining resources are in abundant enough supply and burdens are not fatal, then life will flourish.
Crucially, the burden brought by radiation at Chernobyl is less severe than the benefits reaped from humans leaving the area. Now essentially one of Europe’s largest nature preserves, the ecosystem supports more life than before, even if each individual cycle of that life lasts a little less.
In a way, the Chernobyl disaster reveals the true extent of our environmental impact on the planet. Harmful as it was, the nuclear accident was far less destructive to the local ecosystem than we were. In driving ourselves away from the area, we have created space for nature to return.
Mary:
And what a lesson Chernobyl gives us!! That the pressure we put on all other life is greater and more destructive than all the poisons released by a nuclear disaster! Gone, we won't be mourned or missed, and the world will flourish.
“The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied . . . but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.” ~ John Berger, Keeping a Rendezvous
Odysseus disguised as a beggar
Odysseus disguised as a beggar
HANNAH ARENDT’S AMAZING INSIGHTS INTO THE AMERICAN VERSUS FRENCH REVOLUTION
~ “The fact that the word “revolution” originally meant restoration is more than a mere oddity of semantics. Even the 18th-century revolutions cannot be understood without realizing that revolutions first broke out when restoration had been their aim, and that the content of such restoration was freedom. In America, in the words of John Adams, the men of the revolution had been “called without expectation and compelled without previous inclination”; the same is true for France where, in Tocqueville’s words, “one might have believed the aim of the coming revolution was the restoration of the ancien régime rather than its overthrow.” And in the course of both revolutions, when the actors became aware that they were embarking upon an entirely new enterprise rather than revolving back to anything preceding it, when the word “revolution” consequently was acquiring its new meaning, it was Thomas Paine, of all people, who, still true to the spirit of the bygone age, proposed in all seriousness to call the American and French revolutions “counter-revolutions.” He wanted to save the extraordinary events from the suspicion that an entirely new beginning had been made, and from the odium of violence with which these events were inevitably linked.
Hence, what actually happened at the end of the 18th century was that an attempt at restoration and recovery of old rights and privileges resulted in its exact opposite: a progressing development and the opening up of a future which defied all further attempts at acting or thinking in terms of a circular or revolving motion. And while the term “revolution” was radically transformed in the revolutionary process, something similar, but infinitely more complex, happened to the word “freedom.” As long as nothing more was meant by it than freedom “by God’s blessing restored,” it remained a matter of those rights and liberties we today associate with constitutional government, which properly are called civil rights. What was not included in them was the political right to participate in public affairs. None of those other rights, including the right to be represented for purposes of taxation, were either in theory or practice the result of revolution. Not “life, liberty, and property,” but the claim that they were inalienable rights of all human creatures, no matter where they lived or what kind of government they enjoyed, was revolutionary. And even in this new and revolutionary extension to all mankind, liberty meant no more than freedom from unjustifiable restraint, that is, something essentially negative.
No revolution, no matter how wide it opened its gates to the masses and the downtrodden—les malheureux, les misérables, les damnés de la terre, as we know them from the grand rhetoric of the French Revolution—was ever started by them. And no revolution was ever the result of conspiracies, secret societies, or openly revolutionary parties. Speaking generally, no revolution is even possible where the authority of the body politic is intact, which, under modern conditions, means where the armed forces can be trusted to obey the civil authorities. Revolutions are not necessary but possible answers to the devolution of a regime, not the cause but the consequence of the downfall of political authority. Wherever these disintegrative processes have been allowed to develop unchecked, usually over a prolonged period, revolutions may occur under the condition that a sufficient number of the populace exists which is prepared for a regime’s collapse and is willing to assume power. Revolutions always appear to succeed with amazing ease in their initial stages, and the reason is that those who supposedly “make” revolutions do not “seize power” but rather pick it up where it lies in the streets.
If the men of the American and French revolutions had anything in common prior to the events which were to determine their lives, shape their convictions, and eventually draw them apart, it was a passionate longing to participate in public affairs, and a no less passionate disgust with the hypocrisy and foolishness of “good society”—to which must be added a restlessness and more or less outspoken contempt for the pettiness of merely private affairs. In the sense of the formation of this very special mentality, John Adams was entirely right when he said that “the revolution was effected before the war commenced,” not because of a specifically revolutionary or rebellious spirit, but because the inhabitants of the colonies were “formed by law into corporations, or bodies politic” with the “right to assemble . . . in their own town halls, there to deliberate upon public affairs,” for it was indeed “in these assemblies of towns or districts that the sentiments of the people were formed in the first place.”
*
To understand the role of antiquity in the history of revolutions we would have to recall the enthusiasm for “ancient prudence” with which Harrington and Milton greeted Cromwell’s dictatorship, and how this enthusiasm had been revived in the 18th century by Montesquieu’s Considerations on the Causes of the Grandeur and the Decadence of the Romans. Without the classical example of what politics could be and participation in public affairs could mean for the happiness of man, none of the men of the revolutions would have possessed the courage for what would appear as unprecedented action. Historically speaking, it was as if the Renaissance’s revival of antiquity was suddenly granted a new lease on life, as if the republican fervor of the short-lived Italian city-states, foredoomed by the advent of the nation-state, had only lain dormant, so to speak, to give the nations of Europe the time to grow up under the tutelage of absolute princes and enlightened despots.
No doubt, it is obvious and of great consequence that this passion for freedom for its own sake awoke in and was nourished by men of leisure, by the hommes de lettres who had no masters and were not always busy making a living. In other words, they enjoyed the privileges of Athenian and Roman citizens without taking part in those affairs of state that so occupied the freemen of antiquity. Needless to add, where men live in truly miserable conditions this passion for freedom is unknown. And if we need additional proof of the absence of such conditions in the colonies, the “lovely equality” in America where, as Jefferson put it, “the most conspicuously wretched individual” was better off than 19 out of the 20 million inhabitants of France, we need only remember that John Adams ascribed this love of freedom to “poor and rich, high and low, ignorant and learned.” It is the chief, perhaps the only reason, why the principles that inspired the men of the first revolutions were triumphantly victorious in America and failed tragically in France. Seen with American eyes, a republican government in France was “as unnatural, irrational, and impracticable as it would be over elephants, lions, tigers, panthers, wolves, and bears in the royal menagerie at Versailles” (John Adams). The reason why the attempt was made nevertheless is that those who made it, les hommes de lettres, were not much different from their American colleagues; it was only in the course of the French Revolution that they learned they were acting under radically different circumstances.
The circumstances differed in political as well as social respects. Even the rule of King and Parliament in England was “mild government” in comparison with French absolutism. Under its auspices, England developed an intricate and well-functioning regime of self-government, which needed only the explicit foundation of a republic to confirm its existence. Still, these political differences, though important enough, were negligible compared with the formidable obstacle to the constitution of freedom inherent in the social conditions of Europe. The men of the first revolutions, though they knew well enough that liberation had to precede freedom, were still unaware of the fact that such liberation means more than political liberation from absolute and despotic power; that to be free for freedom meant first of all to be free not only from fear but also from want. And the condition of desperate poverty of the masses of the people, those who for the first time burst into the open when they streamed into the streets of Paris, could not be overcome with political means; the mighty power of the constraint under which they labored did not crumble before the onslaught of the revolution as did the royal power of the king.
The American Revolution was fortunate that it did not have to face this obstacle to freedom and, in fact, owed a good measure of its success to the absence of desperate poverty among the freemen, and to the invisibility of slaves, in the colonies of the New World. To be sure, there was poverty and misery in America, which was comparable to the conditions of the European “laboring poor.” If, in William Penn’s words, “America was a good poor Man’s country” and remained the dream of a promised land for Europe’s impoverished up to the beginning of the 20th century, it is no less true that this goodness depended to a considerable degree on black misery. In the middle of the 18th century, there lived roughly 400,000 blacks along with approximately 1,850,00 whites in America, and, despite the absence of reliable statistical information, it may be doubted that at the time the percentage of complete destitution was higher in the countries of the Old World (though it would become considerably higher during the 19th century). The difference, then, was that the American Revolution—because of the institution of slavery and the belief that slaves belonged to a different “race”—overlooked the existence of the miserable, and with it the formidable task of liberating those who were not so much constrained by political oppression as the sheer necessities of life. Les malheureux, the wretched, who play such a tremendous role in the course of the French Revolution, which identified them with le peuple, either did not exist or remained in complete obscurity in America.
One of the principal consequences of the revolution in France was, for the first time in history, to bring le peuple into the streets and make them visible. When this happened it turned out that not just freedom but the freedom to be free had always been the privilege of the few. By the same token, however, the American Revolution has remained without much consequence for the historical understanding of revolutions, while the French Revolution, which ended in resounding failure, has determined and is still determining what now we call the revolutionary tradition.” ~
Storming of the Bastille, July 14, 1789
Oriana:
Lots of insight here. If you ponder that the word "revolution" is related to "revolve," you can see that "restoration" can be inferred — and not moving into a new territory.
The insight about the different economical situation in the American colonies especially caught my attention.
Mary:
I was struck by the difference pointed out between the governments rebelled against, Great Britain and France.
Oriana:
Funny how rarely (if ever) this is mentioned. England was a constitutional monarchy (think of the Magna Carta) while France was an absolutist monarchy, the equivalent of dictatorship.
JEFFERSON’S LAST LETTER
Jefferson was ill and had to excuse himself from attending July 4 celebrations. The closing paragraph is especially vivid: “all eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of god. these are grounds of hope for others. for ourselves let the annual return of this day, for ever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.”
It went down in history as the last letter Jefferson ever wrote. As most Americans know, Jefferson died shortly after noon that July 4 [1826]. A few hours later, his lifelong friend and sometime rival John Adams also died, with Jefferson’s name on his lips.
The almost unbelievable timing of their deaths resounded as an exclamation mark on the Revolutionary period, hailed by Daniel Webster and others as evidence of divine providence at the root of the nation.
Jefferson’s words in the letter to the mayor of Washington were reprinted far and wide, even emblazoned on silk scarves, as a reminder of what unites us beyond the divisions of the moment." from The Washington Post, 2017
EGYPT AIR 990: WHAT THE PILOT KEPT REPEATING
~ “One of the world's really important divides lies between nations that react well to accidents and nations that do not. This is as true for a confined and technical event like the crash of a single flight as it is for political or military disasters. The first requirement is a matter of national will, and never a sure thing: it is the intention to get the story right, wherever the blame may lie. The second requirement follows immediately upon the first, and is probably easier to achieve: it is the need for people in the aftermath to maintain even tempers and open minds. The path they follow may not be simple, but it can provide for at least the possibility of effective resolutions.
The en-route controller working the flight was a woman named Ann Brennan, a private pilot with eight years on the job. She had the swagger of a good controller, a real pro. Later she characterized the air traffic that night as slow, which it was—during the critical hour she had handled only three other flights. The offshore military-exercise zones, known as warning areas, were inactive. The sky was sleeping.
At 1:47 Brennan said, "EgyptAir Nine-ninety, change to my frequency one-two-five-point-niner-two."
EgyptAir acknowledged the request with a friendly "Good day," and after a pause checked in on the new frequency: "New York, EgyptAir Nine-nine-zero heavy, good morning."
Brennan answered, "EgyptAir Nine-ninety, roger."
That was the last exchange. Brennan noticed that the flight still had about fifteen minutes to go before leaving her sector. Wearing her headset, she stood up and walked six feet away to sort some paperwork. In total she spent maybe six minutes away from her station, a reasonable interval on such a night. It was just unlucky that while her back was turned Flight 990 went down.
A computer captured what she would have seen—a strangely abstract death no more dramatic than a video game. About two minutes after the final radio call, at 1:49:53 in the morning, the radar swept across EgyptAir's transponder at 33,000 feet. Afterward, at successive twelve-second intervals, the radar read 31,500, 25,400, and 18,300 feet—a descent rate so great that the air-traffic-control computers interpreted the information as false, and showed "XXXX" for the altitude on Brennan's display. With the next sweep the radar lost the transponder entirely, and picked up only an unenhanced "primary" blip, a return from the airplane's metal mass. The surprise is that the radar continued to receive such returns (which show only location, and not altitude) for nearly another minute and a half, indicating that the dive must have dramatically slowed or stopped, and that the 767 remained airborne, however tenuously, during that interval. A minute and a half is a long time. As the Boeing simulations later showed, it must have been a strange and dreamlike period for the pilots, hurtling through the night with no chance of awakening.
The U.S. Navy was given the job of salvage, and it in turn hired a contractor named Oceaneering, which arrived with a ship and grapples and remote-controlled submarines. Nine days after the accident the flight-data recorder—the "black box" that records flight and systems data—was retrieved and sent to the NTSB laboratory in Washington. the second black box, the cockpit voice recorder, had been salvaged the night before and was sent on Sunday to the NTSB. The tape was cleaned and processed, and a small group that included a translator (who was not Egyptian) gathered in a listening room at L'Enfant Plaza to hear it through.
"I Rely on God"
Listening to cockpit recordings is a tough and voyeuristic duty, restricted to the principal investigators and people with specific knowledge of the airplane or the pilots, who might help to prepare an accurate transcript. Experienced investigators grow accustomed to the job, but I talked to several who had heard the EgyptAir tape, and they admitted that they had been taken aback. Black boxes are such pitiless, unblinking devices. When the information they contained from Flight 990 was combined with the radar profile and the first, sketchy information on the crew, this was the story it seemed to tell:
The flight lasted thirty-one minutes. During the departure from New York it was captained, as required, by the aircraft commander, a portly senior pilot named Ahmad al-Habashi, fifty-seven, who had flown thirty-six years for the airline. Habashi of course sat in the left seat. In the right seat was the most junior member of the crew, a thirty-six-year-old co-pilot who was progressing well in his career and looking forward to getting married. Before takeoff the co-pilot advised the flight attendants by saying, in Arabic, "In the name of God, the merciful, the compassionate. Cabin crew takeoff position." This was not unusual.
After takeoff the autopilot did the flying. Habashi and the co-pilot kept watch, talked to air-traffic control, and gossiped about their work. The cockpit door was unlocked, which was fairly standard on EgyptAir flights. Various flight attendants came in and left; for a while the chief pilot, the man who was deadheading back to Cairo, stopped by the cockpit to chat. Then, twenty minutes into the flight, the "cruise" co-pilot, Gameel al-Batouti, arrived. Batouti was a big, friendly guy with a reputation for telling jokes and enjoying life. Three months short of sixty, and mandatory retirement, he was unusually old for a co-pilot. He had joined the airline in his mid-forties, after a career as a flight instructor for the air force, and had rejected several opportunities for command. His lack of ambition was odd but not unheard of: his English was poor and might have given him trouble on the necessary exams; moreover, as the company's senior 767 co-pilot, he made adequate money and had his pick of long-distance flights. Now he used his seniority to urge the junior co-pilot to cede the right seat ahead of the scheduled crew change. When the junior man resisted, Batouti said, "You mean you're not going to get up? You will get up. Go and get some rest and come back." The junior co-pilot stayed in his seat a bit longer and then left the cockpit. Batouti took the seat and buckled in.
Batouti was married and had five children. Four of them were grown and doing well. His fifth child was a girl, age ten, who was sick with lupus but responding to treatment that he had arranged for her to receive in Los Angeles. Batouti had a nice house in Cairo. He had a vacation house on the beach. He did not drink heavily. He was moderately religious. He had his retirement planned. He had acquired an automobile tire in New Jersey the day before, and was bringing it home in the cargo hold. He had also picked up some free samples of Viagra, to distribute as gifts.
At 1:47 A.M. the last calls came in from air-traffic control, from Ann Brennan, far off in the night at her display. Captain Habashi handled the calls. He said, "New York, EgyptAir Nine-nine-zero heavy, good morning," and she answered with her final "EgyptAir Nine-ninety, roger.”
At 1:48 Batouti found the junior co-pilot's pen and handed it across to Habashi. He said, "Look, here's the new first officer's pen. Give it to him, please. God spare you." He added, "To make sure it doesn't get lost."
Habashi said, "Excuse me, Jimmy, while I take a quick trip to the toilet." He ran his electric seat back with a whir. There was the sound of the cockpit door moving.
Batouti said, "Go ahead, please."
Habashi said, "Before it gets crowded. While they are eating. And I'll be back to you."
Again the cockpit door moved. There was a clunk. There was a clink. It seems that Batouti was now alone in the cockpit. The 767 was at 33,000 feet, cruising peacefully eastward at .79 Mach.
At 1:48:30 a strange, wordlike sound was uttered, three syllables with emphasis on the second, perhaps more English than Arabic, and variously heard on the tape as "control it," "hydraulic," or something unintelligible. The NTSB ran extensive speech and sound-spectrum studies on it, and was never able to assign it conclusively to Batouti or to anyone else. But what is clear is that Batouti then softly said, "Tawakkalt ala Allah," which proved difficult to translate, and was at first rendered incorrectly, but essentially means "I rely on God." An electric seat whirred. The autopilot disengaged, and the airplane sailed on as before for another four seconds. Again Batouti said, "I rely on God." Then two things happened almost simultaneously, according to the flight-data recorder: the throttles in the cockpit moved back fast to minimum idle, and a second later, back at the tail, the airplane's massive elevators (the pitch-control surfaces) dropped to a three-degrees-down position. When the elevators drop, the tail goes up; and when the tail goes up, the nose points down. Apparently Batouti had chopped the power and pushed the control yoke forward.
The effect was dramatic. The airplane began to dive steeply, dropping its nose so quickly that the environment inside plunged to nearly zero gs, the weightless condition of space. Six times in quick succession Batouti repeated, "I rely on God." His tone was calm. There was a loud thump. As the nose continued to pitch downward, the airplane went into the negative-g range, nudging loose objects against the ceiling. The elevators moved even farther down. Batouti said, "I rely on God."
Gameel al-Batouti
Gameel al-Batouti
Somehow, in the midst of this, now sixteen seconds into the dive, Captain Habashi made his way back from the toilet. He yelled, "What's happening? What's happening?"
Batouti said, "I rely on God.”
The wind outside was roaring. The airplane was dropping through 30,800 feet, and accelerating beyond its maximum operating speed of .86 Mach. In the cockpit the altimeters were spinning like cartoon clocks. Warning horns were sounding, warning lights were flashing—low oil pressure on the left engine, and then on the right. The master alarm went off, a loud high-to-low warble.
For the last time Batouti said, "I rely on God."
Again Habashi shouted, "What's happening?" By then he must have reached the left control yoke. The negative gs ended as he countered the pitch-over, slowing the rate at which the nose was dropping. But the 767 was still angled down steeply, 40 degrees below the horizon, and it was accelerating. The rate of descent hit 39,000 feet a minute.
"What's happening, Gameel? What's happening?"
Habashi was clearly pulling very hard on his control yoke, trying desperately to raise the nose. Even so, thirty seconds into the dive, at 22,200 feet, the airplane hit the speed of sound, at which it was certainly not meant to fly. Many things happened in quick succession in the cockpit. Batouti reached over and shut off the fuel, killing both engines. Habashi screamed, "What is this? What is this? Did you shut the engines?" The throttles were pushed full forward—for no obvious reason, since the engines were dead. The speed-brake handle was then pulled, deploying drag devices on the wings.
At the same time, there was an unusual occurrence back at the tail: the right-side and left-side elevators, which normally move together to control the airplane's pitch, began to "split," or move in opposite directions. Specifically: the elevator on the right remained down, while the left-side elevator moved up to a healthy recovery position. That this could happen at all was the result of a design feature meant to allow either pilot to overpower a mechanical jam and control the airplane with only one elevator. The details are complex, but the essence in this case seemed to be that the right elevator was being pushed down by Batouti while the left elevator was being pulled up by the captain. The NTSB concluded that a "force fight" had broken out in the cockpit.
Words were failing Habashi. He yelled, "Get away in the engines!" And then, incredulously, "... shut the engines!"
Batouti said calmly, "It's shut."
Habashi did not have time to make sense of the happenings. He probably did not have time to get into his seat and slide it forward. He must have been standing in the cockpit, leaning over the seatback and hauling on the controls. The commotion was horrendous. He was reacting instinctively as a pilot, yelling, "Pull!" and then, "Pull with me! Pull with me! Pull with me!"
It was the last instant captured by the on-board flight recorders. The elevators were split, with the one on the right side, Batouti's side, still pushed into a nose-down position. The ailerons on both wings had assumed a strange upswept position, normally never seen on an airplane. The 767 was at 16,416 feet, doing 527 miles an hour, and pulling a moderately heavy 2.4 gs, indicating that the nose, though still below the horizon, was rising fast, and that Habashi's efforts on the left side were having an effect. A belated recovery was under way. At that point, because the engines had been cut, all nonessential electrical devices were lost, blacking out not only the recorders, which rely on primary power, but also most of the instrument displays and lights. The pilots were left to the darkness of the sky, whether to work together or to fight. I've often wondered what happened between those two men during the 114 seconds that remained of their lives. We'll never know. Radar reconstruction showed that the 767 recovered from the dive at 16,000 feet and, like a great wounded glider, soared steeply back to 24,000 feet, turned to the southeast while beginning to break apart, and shed its useless left engine and some of its skin before giving up for good and diving to its death at high speed.
When this evidence emerged at the NTSB, the American investigators were shocked but also relieved by the obvious conclusion. There was no bomb here. Despite initial fears, there was nothing wrong with the airplane. The apparent cause was pilot error at its extreme: Batouti had gone haywire. Every detail that emerged from the two flight recorders fit that scenario: the sequence of the switches and controls that were moved, the responses of the airplane, and the words that were spoken, however cryptic and incomplete. Batouti had waited to be alone in the cockpit, and had intentionally pushed the airplane to its death. He had even fought the captain's valiant attempt at recovery.
While the Egyptians were proposing theory after theory to absolve Batouti, the FBI was conducting a criminal investigation, collecting evidence that provided for his possible motive. Mostly through interviews with employees of the Pennsylvania Hotel, the FBI found that Batouti had a reputation for sexual impropriety—and not merely by the prudish standards of America. It was reported that on multiple occasions over the previous two years he had been suspected of exposing himself to teenage girls, masturbating in public, following female guests to their rooms, and listening at their doors. Some of the maids, it was said, were afraid of him, and the hotel security guards had once brought him in for questioning and a warning. Apparently the hotel had considered banning him. The FBI learned that EgyptAir was aware of these problems and had warned Batouti to control his behavior. He was not considered to be a dangerous man—and certainly he was more sad than bad. In fact, there was a good side to Batouti that came out in these interviews as well. He was very human. Many people were fond of him, even at the hotel.
But a story soon surfaced that an altercation may have occurred during the New York layover before the fatal departure. The FBI was told that there had been trouble, and possibly an argument with the chief pilot, who was also staying at the hotel. It was hypothesized that the chief pilot might have threatened disciplinary action upon arrival back in Cairo—despite the public humiliation that would entail. Was that perhaps Batouti's motive? Did the killing of 217 people result from a simple act of vengeance against one man?
*
I went downtown, to an old coffeehouse near the Nile, and spent a few hours with Hani Shukrallah, a columnist and one of the more thoughtful observers of the Egyptian scene. Shukrallah is a small, nervous man, and a heavy smoker. He said, "I know that as far as the Egyptian government was concerned, the point that this was not pilot error, and that the Egyptian pilot did not bring it down—this was decided before the investigation began. It had to do with Egypt's image in the outside world ... The government would have viewed this exactly as it would, for example, an Islamic terrorist act in Luxor—something that we should cover up. So it got politicized immediately. And this became an official line: You are out there to prove that EgyptAir is not responsible. It became a national duty. It was us versus the West. And all the history played into it, from Bonaparte's campaign until now.”
So what was wrong with Batouti? The simplest explanation is that he was trying to crash the airplane. But if he wasn't, if the Egyptians were right that he couldn't recover from a dual actuator failure, what was wrong with him as an aviator?
I posed the question to Jim Walters, the airline pilot who remained sympathetic to the Egyptians' position. He had a ready answer. He called Batouti "the world's worst airline pilot."
Bernard Loeb would have none of it. He said, "Sure. In the end they were willing to sell him down the river. They said, 'He panicked!' Bottom line is, if the actuator drops the nose, you can pull it up. They know that. They admit it. Pulling the nose up is the most intuitive, reflexive thing you can do in an airplane. So when you start hearing arguments like that, you know people are blowing smoke.”
"Look, first we sit through this cockpit voice recording in which ... " He shook his head. "How many cockpit voice recordings have I heard? Hundreds? Thousands? When someone has a problem with an airplane, you know it. One of our investigators used to say to me, 'These damned pilots, they don't tell us what's happening. Why don't they say, "It's the rudder!"' They don't do that. But I'll tell you what they do say. They make clear as hell that there's something really wrong. 'What the hell's going on? What is that?' Every single one of them. When there's a control problem of some sort, it is so crystal clear that they are trying desperately to diagnose what is going on. Right to when the recorder quits. They are fighting for their lives.
"But this guy is sitting there saying the same thing in a slow, measured way, indicating no stress. The captain comes in and asks what's going on, and he doesn't answer! That's what you start with. Now you take the dual actuator failure that doesn't match the flight profile, and is also fully recoverable. Where do you want to go after that?"
*
I knew that at the start of the investigation the Egyptian delegation had included a man named Mamdouh Heshmat, a high official in civil aviation. When the cockpit voice recording first arrived at L'Enfant Plaza, Heshmat was there, and he heard it through with a headset on. According to several investigators who listened alongside him, he came out of the room looking badly shaken, and made it clear he knew that Batouti had done something wrong. He may have called Cairo with that news. The next day he flew home, never to reappear in Washington. When NTSB investigators went to Cairo, they could not find him, though it was said that he was still working for the government.” ~
Oriana:
What I left out from this lengthy article was Egypt’s increasingly convoluted way of trying to cover up Batouti’s sexual misbehavior and the allegation of a confrontation between Batouti and the senior airline pilot who threatened Batouti with disciplinary action and told him it would be his last flight on the US-Cairo route. Basically, Egypt tried to exclude any possibility that it really was suicide and not a mechanical failure.
That a suicidal person would seem calm is in line with other accounts of suicidal acts. One explanation is that all stress is over — within a short time, all problems will be over. It’s a permanent solution to any humiliation or any other wounds and heavy difficulties. No more stress!
But what about . . . the afterlife? Isn’t suicide a dreadful sin? I have to speculate here, but I suppose that in the suicidal state of mind, it’s god’s mercy that is being counted on. “I rely on God,” Batouti kept repeating, his mantra for staying calm. Allah would accept him. In the worst-case scenario, yes, there would be a stay in hell, but in Islam hell is not permanent. A faithful Muslim would eventually get to paradise. All is well that ends well.
(By the way, even the buying of gifts does not eliminate the possibility of a suicidal state of mind. It’s perhaps a strange dissociation, as if two kinds of consciousness existed side by side, as may happen in the course of schizophrenia. Based on my personal experience, it wouldn’t surprise me if Batouti had made a few phone calls to friends to cheerfully announce that he had some naughty gifts for them.)
*
DID GOD REALLY MEAN THAT?
~ “LIBERAL CHRISTIANS ARE ALWAYS TELLING ME THAT GOD DIDN’T REALLY MEAN THIS OR THAT JESUS DIDN’T REALLY MEAN THAT. Those parts of the Bible are metaphors and only atheists and the small minority of about 48% of Christians take that part literally. Real Christians of course understand the Truth and that is that the entire Bible is to be taken metaphorically except for the existence of God, some of Jesus’s magic tricks, his resurrection, and anything else liberal Christians want to believe really happened.
Maybe we should take this whole “metaphorical” thing one step further and just admit that maybe, possibly, probably, almost certainly, God is a metaphor too. Maybe the whole thing is fictional and each of the unknown number of anonymous authors had their own agendas and metaphors they were trying to convey and there wasn’t a single narrative at all.
Maybe Jesus was a metaphor too. When this is brought up, everyone always appeals to authority and claims that all the historians agree that there was a man named Jesus. But when asked to produce evidence of this character, nothing of consequence has been presented. In fact, there were similar stories about a man named Simon who was resurrected by the angel Gabriel after three days of being dead. Those stories pre-date Jesus and were circulated in that area. But who cares, it’s just a metaphor.
Let’s say that you are an atheist and believe that the Bible is 100% metaphor. That is to say that it is complete and utter fiction but that for some odd reason, you are able to pretend that all the horrible stuff in the Bible isn’t there and that the good parts are what counts. You value the Bible purely as a metaphor for the Human condition. Are you still a Christian?
I think that many Christians today are pretty close to this position except that they do accept God and Jesus as literal. At some point it really just becomes a matter of degrees. Everyone takes some part of the Bible metaphorically, so why can’t someone claim to be a Christian and take the whole of the Bible metaphorically — God and all.” ~
Oriana:
I like metaphorical interpretations, but here I hit a blank: what is god a metaphor for? If god is not “the invisible old man with a white beard sitting on a throne in the sky — you can’t take it so literally” — then can we have another definition? Here the most common answer I’ve received is “the ground of being” — but no one has been able to explain to me what that means, except through the analogy of a fish not being aware of water (can we be sure? perhaps fish are exquisitely attuned to various qualities of water, and those that jump above surface would also realize the difference between water and air).
Titian: God the Father (detail of Assumption of the Virgin)
I like Titian's god the father (when I was a child in Poland, we'd say Mr. God). It's presumably windy up there, so the beard and hair billow in a pleasant way. Note that god's nose is large, thick, and not straight; unlike Jesus in so many paintings, Titian's Yahweh does not have idealized features. Still, for someone whose main occupation seemed to be smiting, he looks pretty nice. A bit wistful, perhaps. Not wearing a complicated crown helps, and the warm colors.
Actually a disheveled and, by our standard, a hippie-esque kind of Yahweh. Refreshing, but it would be deeply disturbing to the religious right wing.
(Btw, I've noticed that the Evangelicals who believe in imminent Second Coming sometimes spell “prophets” as “profits.” It’s almost too good.)
*
THE TWELVE THRONES
“I tell you solemnly in the New World, when the Son of Man is seated on his throne of splendor, you who have been with me will be seated on twelve thrones, to judge the Twelve Tribes of Israel.” ~ Matthew 19:28
Note that the only concern here is with Israel (the Ten Lost Tribes have somehow been found) — not with the rest of the world. What did the average inhabitant of Ancient Israel care about the “rest of the world”? What did Jesus? Only Israel counted.
The Twelve Thrones, Bampton, Oxfordshire, end of 13th century
*
THE BENEFITS OF AUTOPHAGY (“SELF-EATING”)
~ “Autophagy is a natural regeneration process that occurs at a cellular level in the body, reducing the likelihood of contracting some diseases as well as prolonging lifespan.
In 2016, Japanese scientist Yoshinori Ohsumi won the Nobel Prize for his discoveries into the mechanisms of autophagy. These have led to a better understanding of diseases such as Parkinson's and dementia.
Since then, drug companies and academics have raced to find drugs that will stimulate the process, and diet and wellness experts are jumping on the bandwagon claiming that the process can be induced naturally by fasting, high-intensity exercise and restricting carbohydrates.
Autophagy was first discovered in the 1960s, but its fundamental importance was only recognized after Yoshinori Ohsumi's research in the 1990s. It protects against diseases like Parkinson's, Huntington's and certain forms of dementia. It also seems to be beneficial in the context of infection control, as well as protecting against excessive inflammation.” ~
from another source:
~ “Stimulating autophagy does several things: it clears out old, unwanted cellular materials and proteins, and it also stimulates the production of growth hormone, which regenerates fresh cellular material and fuels up cell renewal. If your body has recently had an infection, autophagy may be able to destroy lingering bacteria or viruses.
While drug companies are working on creating a pharmaceutical panacea to stimulate autophagy, and some diet and fitness bloggers claim that certain supplements can cause autophagy, there is really only one proven way to trigger it: through fasting. Nutrient deprivation triggers autophagy.
Autophagy signaling in the body involves two key pathways when the body’s nutrients become depleted:
mTOR, or mammalian target of rapamycin, regulates the nutrients that affects cellular growth, protein synthesis, and anabolism. It is linked to the activation of insulin receptors and new tissue creation.
AMPK or AMP-activated protein kinase helps to maintain energy homeostasis and activate the body’s backup fuel mechanisms.
mTOR and AMPK both are attuned to the presence of nutrients in your body. These two pathways help your body decide if it will activate a growth response — mTor — or go into autophagy — AMPK.
Autophagy also works in concert with two key hormones: glucagon and insulin. People with diabetes or hypoglycemia have trouble regulating, or are overly sensitive to insulin. When insulin goes up, glucagon goes down and vice versa. When you fast, you drop insulin and increase glucagon, which stimulates autophagy.” ~
Oriana:
For those of us who can’t do serious fasting, there is hope that the right diet — the kind that doesn’t stimulate much insulin release — and the consumption of extra-virgin olive oil and medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) (MCTs are abundant in coconut oil) can stimulate autophagy.
If right away you think about the traditional Atkins diet, you are correct — in part. What Atkins didn’t realize was that excess protein gets turned into glucose and thus stimulates insulin release — and it actives the mTOR pathway. So, alas, protein also has to be restricted.
MCT (derived from coconut oil) seems especially promising because it has a way of eliminating or greatly reducing hunger. You don’t need to eat as much to feel full.
On the other hand, olive oil has been used for millennia. Higher consumption has been associated with less cancer and a longer life expectancy, among numerous other benefits
Avocado oil may provide similar benefits, but until we have more research, the best strategy might be eating one avocado a day, and using both extra virgin olive oil and MCT (or coconut oil; I recommend the extra-virgin coconut oil, available online)
*
ending on beauty:
GDAŃSK BAY
The soft Baltic wind
confesses to the pines
the secret of that glow
at night on the Gdańsk Bay:
it’s ancient Kashub fishermen
ladled out on the dark
water that was home.
They row in the endless
trembling wake of the moon
and do not complain.
~ Oriana
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