THE BELA LUGOSI MOTH
In the hummingbird pavilion,
on raw concrete, past an iridescent
veil of morpho butterflies,
wings not trembling nor folded
in prayer, but spread like a cape,
black silk, two yellow eyes —
the Bela Lugosi moth.
Bela, whose tombstone
I found in Los Angeles,
at the Cemetery of the Holy Cross.
Engraved in strict granite,
only name and dates —
slow syllables welling up,
in black flight swooping down,
in a crimson hush:
a shadow, a shudder, a hiss —
I mean kiss —
*
Bela, this moth is your true
memorial. Something of you,
with black wings —
Fear too has its rituals,
dresses in capes and fastens fangs.
But when they taunt, “You never
loved. You cannot love,”
the vampire confesses,
I too can love —
a crucifixion, even as I linger
in the Hummingbird Pavilion,
happier than all the children
whose memory is daylight
and will self-destruct —
while I watch the Bela Lugosi
head-down on the false stone.
Taste is caution.
Style is daring. On black wings
the false eyes warn
art is love and will uncloak
hidden self you didn’t know
waiting in the vivid dark,
the Great Undead
watching from the wall.
~ Oriana
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Though there seems to be a unanimous consensus that the current ending is the right ending, I can't help but miss the one I parted with:
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THE DISEASE ORIGIN OF THE VAMPIRE MYTH
~ The vampire is a common image in today’s pop culture, and one that takes many forms: from Alucard, the dashing spawn of Dracula in the PlayStation game “Castlevania: Symphony of the Night”; to Edward, the romantic, idealistic lover in the “Twilight” series.
In many respects, the vampire of today is far removed from its roots in Eastern European folklore. As a professor of Slavic studies who has taught a course on vampires called “Dracula” for more than a decade, I’m always fascinated by the vampire’s popularity, considering its origins – as a demonic creature strongly associated with disease.
EXPLAINING THE UNKNOWN
The first known reference to vampires appeared in written form in Old Russian in A.D. 1047, soon after Orthodox Christianity moved into Eastern Europe. The term for vampire was “upir,” which has uncertain origins, but its possible literal meaning was “the thing at the feast or sacrifice,” referring to a potentially dangerous spiritual entity that people believed could appear at rituals for the dead. It was a euphemism used to avoid speaking the creature’s name – and unfortunately, historians may never learn its real name, or even when beliefs about it surfaced.
The vampire served a function similar to that of many other demonic creatures in folklore around the world: They were blamed for a variety of problems, but particularly disease, at a time when knowledge of bacteria and viruses did not exist.
Scholars have put forth several theories about various diseases’ connections to vampires. It is likely that no one disease provides a simple, “pure” origin for vampire myths, since beliefs about vampires changed over time.
But two in particular show solid links. One is rabies, whose name comes from a Latin term for “madness.” It’s one of the oldest recognized diseases on the planet, transmissible from animals to humans, and primarily spread through biting – an obvious reference to a classic vampire trait.
There are other curious connections. One central symptom of the disease is hydrophobia, a fear of water. Painful muscle contractions in the esophagus lead rabies victims to avoid eating and drinking, or even swallowing their own saliva, which eventually causes “foaming at the mouth.” In some folklore, vampires cannot cross running water without being carried or assisted in some way, as an extension of this symptom. Furthermore, rabies can lead to a fear of light, altered sleep patterns and increased aggression, elements of how vampires are described in a variety of folktales.
The second disease is pellagra, caused by a dietary deficiency of niacin (vitamin B3) or the amino acid tryptophan. Often, pellagra is brought on by diets high in corn products and alcohol. After Europeans landed in the Americas, they transported corn back to Europe. But they ignored a key step in preparing corn: washing it, often using lime – a process called “nixtamalization” that can reduce the risk of pellagra.
Pellagra causes the classic “4 D’s”: dermatitis, diarrhea, dementia and death. Some sufferers also experience high sensitivity to sunlight – described in some depictions of vampires – which leads to corpselike skin.
SOCIAL CARE
Multiple diseases show connections to folklore about vampires, but they can’t necessarily explain how the myths actually began. Pellagra, for example, did not exist in Eastern Europe until the 18th century, centuries after vampire beliefs had originally emerged.
Both pellagra and rabies are important, however, because they were epidemic during a key period in vampire history. During the so-called Great Vampire Epidemic, from roughly 1725 to 1755, vampire myths “went viral” across the continent.
As disease spread in Eastern Europe, supernatural causes were often blamed, and vampire hysteria spread throughout the region. Many people believed that vampires were the “undead” – people who lived on in some way after death – and that the vampire could be stopped by attacking its corpse. They carried out “vampire burials,” which could involve putting a stake through the corpse, covering the body in garlic and a variety of other traditions that had been present in Slavic folklore for centuries.
Meanwhile, Austrian and German soldiers fighting the Ottomans in the region witnessed this mass desecration of graves and returned home to Western Europe with stories of the vampire.
But why did so much vampire hysteria spring up in the first place? Disease was a primary culprit, but a sort of “perfect storm” existed in Eastern Europe at the time.The era of the Great Vampire Epidemic was not just a period of disease, but one of political and religious upheaval as well.
During the 18th century, Eastern Europe faced pressure from within and without as domestic and foreign powers exercised their control over the region, with local cultures often suppressed.
Serbia, for example, was struggling between the Hapsburg Monarchy in Central Europe and the Ottomans. Poland was increasingly under foreign powers, Bulgaria was under Ottoman rule, and Russia was undergoing dramatic cultural change due to the policies of Czar Peter the Great.
This is somewhat analogous to today, as the world contends with the COVID-19 pandemic amid political change and uncertainty. Perceived societal breakdown, whether real or imagined, can lead to dramatic responses in society. ~
https://theconversation.com/more-disease-than-dracula-how-the-vampire-myth-was-born-167482?fbclid=IwAR0U0YGWvSAlOqDyCUcuFneL3SVUWFjlFAIRN8Mik-4F7g1y5QnD0YVg9gM
Oriana:
And what about the tradition remedy meant to repel vampires — garlic?
~ The traditional belief that garlic’s odor deters vampires may have originated with the disease rabies. “In 1998,” writes Mark, “Spanish neurologist Dr. Juan Gomez-Alonso made a correlation between reports of rabies outbreaks in and around the Balkans—especially a devastating one in dogs, wolves, and other animals that plagued Hungary from 1721 to 1728—and the ‘vampire epidemics’ that erupted shortly thereafter. Wolves and bats, if rabid, have the same snarling, slobbering look about them that folklore ascribed to vampires—as would a human being suffering from rabies. Various other symptoms support the rabies-vampire link: Dr. Gomez-Alonso found that nearly 25 percent of rabid men have a tendency to bite other people. That almost guarantees transmission, as the virus is carried in saliva. Rabies can even help explain the supposed aversion of vampires to garlic. Infected people display a hypersensitive response to any pronounced olfactory stimulation, which would naturally include the pungent smell of garlic.
Rabies may also harbor the roots of the vampiric fear of mirrors,” Mark writes. “Strong odors or visual stimuli trigger spasms of the face and vocal muscles of those with rabies, and this in turn induces hoarse groans, bared teeth, and a bloody frothing at the mouth. What rabies sufferer would not shrink from such a reflection?” Daylight might only make self-contemplation in a mirror worse.
At least one scholar has proposed that the genetic red blood cell deficiency porphyria, which (once activated) renders its sufferers pallid and hypersensitive to light, could also have inspired vampire legends.” ~
https://blog.nationalgeographic.org/2010/02/22/six-ways-to-stop-a-vampire/
The vampire haunts us, but then all our dead do, still wanting something from us — love, reassurance, prayers, maybe one more sip of life? Their need is dangerous, calling us to them, tempting us with hope of reunion. Wanting them too much, refusing to let them go, could tie us to death, our "yes" sealing us off with them, beyond time, beyond life.
The vampire myth is sexual, the bite a deathly kiss, the kiss a deathly bite. The vampire "takes" his victims, makes them his own, in his likeness.
Rapist or seducer, he needs that first assent to enter, to work his dark magic.
When I was barely a teenager some vampire story scared me into thinking a vampire could come and bite me in my sleep. I took to wearing, not garlic, but a bunch of holy medals on a chain...a counterspell to warn him off.
Certainly the idea of possession, of being consumed, helpless to resist, is an apt metaphor for the worst hurts we can imagine, diseases that possess and transform with such power that there is no possible cure, no escape, no healing, nothing left of what you were before. The most perfect fit is rabies indeed, which has no remedy, and destroys utterly the brain and body of the infected, transforming man into beast, beast into demon. Not only does it transform appearance, like smallpox does, it erases any recognizable human behavior, as though even the soul has been stolen or destroyed. Vampirism frightens as rabies does. It is more than a death sentence — it’s an existential curse, pushing us hard against our worst terror, the eradication of the self.
It is interesting to note that the way to kill a vampire, to render him unable to act, involves breaking a basic taboo...unearthing his human remains and destroying their integrity. The body is broken in a ritual that includes beheading, and either removing or impaling the heart. The vampire legend itself is woven out of the breaking of taboos, from denying the boundary between the dead and the living to denying the integrity and respect due a human body. It's all a wicked business, from start to stop, and wickedly tantalizing.
Oriana:
The current popularity of vampire romances may have a kernel of truth to it. On the one hand, falling in love enlarges our personality; on the other hand, it also consumes our energy and can make us feel helpless, possessed, in someone else’s control. Women sometimes complain that they are doing all the giving, while the man is a taker. The vampiric aspect varies with the pathology of a particular lover — see the section below on emotional vampires.
An unwanted child may also feel like a vampire, draining the mother’s health and energy. But as the child grows older, there are also cases where the possessive mother becomes a vampire, trying to satisfy her needs through the child.
Still, by far the most common portrayal of a vampire in the popular culture is as a lover. He’s taken the place of a “demon lover” of the Romantics. The metaphor fits any relationship based on exploitation rather than mutual nurturing.
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EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES
As a physician, I've found that the biggest energy drain on my patients is relationships. Some relationships are positive and mood elevating. Others can suck optimism and serenity right out of you.
I call these draining people emotional vampires. They do more than drain your physical energy. The most malignant ones can make you believe you're unworthy and unlovable. Others inflict damage with smaller digs to make you feel bad about yourself—"Dear, I see you've put on a few pounds" or "You're overly sensitive!" Just like that, they've thrown you off-center by prodding areas of shaky self-worth.
FIVE TYPES OF EMOTIONAL VAMPIRES
THE NARCISSIST
Their motto is "Me first." Everything is all about them. They have a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement, hog attention, and crave admiration. They're dangerous because they lack empathy and have a limited capacity for unconditional love. If you don't do things their way, they become punishing, withholding, or cold.
How to Protect Yourself: Keep your expectations realistic. These are emotionally limited people. Try not to fall in love with one or expect them to be selfless or to love without strings attached. Never make your self-worth dependent on them or confide your deepest feelings to them. To successfully communicate, the hard truth is that you must show how something will be to their benefit. Though it's better not to have to contend with this tedious ego stroking if the relationship is unavoidable this approach works.
THE VICTIM
These vampires grate on you with their "poor-me" attitude. The world is against them, it's the reason for their unhappiness. When you offer a solution to their problems they say, "Yes, but..." Eventually, you might end up screening your calls or purposely avoiding them. As a friend, you may want to help, but their tales of woe overwhelm you.
How to Protect Yourself: Set kind but firm limits. Listen briefly to the friend or relative but then say, "I love you but I can only listen for a few minutes unless you want to discuss solutions." With a co-worker, sympathize by saying, "I'll keep having good thoughts for things to work out." Then add, "I hope you understand, but I'm on deadline and must return to work." Body language that telegraphs "This isn't a good time," such as crossing your arms and breaking eye contact, can help enforce these healthy limits.
THE CONTROLLER
These people obsessively try to control you and dictate how you're supposed to be and feel. They have an opinion about everything. They'll control you by invalidating your emotions when they don't fit into their own rule book. They often start sentences with "You know what you need?" and then proceed to tell you. You end up feeling dominated, demeaned, or put down.
How to Protect Yourself: The secret to success is to never try to control a controller. Be healthily assertive, but don't tell them what to do. You can say, "I value your advice, but really need to work through this myself." Be confident, and don't play the victim.
THE CONSTANT TALKER
These people aren't interested in your feelings. They are only concerned with themselves. You may wait for an opening to get a word in edgewise but it never comes. Or they might physically move in so close that they're practically breathing on you. You edge backward, but they step closer.
How to Protect Yourself: These individuals don't respond to nonverbal cues. You must speak up and interrupt, as tough as that is to do. Listen for a few minutes, then politely say, "I hate to interrupt, but I have to talk to these other people/get to an appointment/go to the bathroom." (It's a much more constructive tactic than saying, "Keep quiet, you're driving me crazy!") If this is a family member, politely say, "I'd love if you allowed me some time to talk to so I can add to the conversation." If you say this neutrally, it can better be heard.
THE DRAMA QUEEN
These people have a flair for small incidents into off-the-chart dramas. My patient Sarah was exhausted when she hired a new employee who was always late. One week he had the flu and "almost died." Next, his car was towed, again! Each time this employee left her office, Sarah felt tired and used.
How to Protect Yourself: A drama queen can't draw energy from equanimity. Stay calm, and take a few deep breaths. This will help you not get caught up in the histrionics. Set kind but firm limits. Say, for example, "You must be here on time to keep your job. I'm sorry for all your mishaps, but work comes first.”
To improve your relationships and increase your energy level, I suggest taking an inventory of people who give you energy and those that drain you. Try to spend time with the loving, nurturing people, and learn to set limits with those who drain you. This will enhance the quality of your life.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/emotional-freedom/201101/the-5-kinds-emotional-vampires-you-could-encounter
I’ve encountered two main types of emotional vampires. Two types of people drain my energy, and I’ve learned to stay away from them.
The first type is INSATIABLY NEEDY. Call him a HUNGRY GHOST. He (my experience has been mainly with needy men, so I tend to use the male pronoun — but of course it can just as easily be a woman) will call multiple times during the day and carry on and on — about himself, since he has no real interest in you as a person. You are there only to provide for his needs.
This is often a narcissist, who must be admired. He requires you to provide him with his fix of admiration. Since it’s difficult for one close friend or lover to provide unlimited admiration, expect more than one lover at a time. And since he has little or no empathy, he’ll reveal the existence of the other lover(s) to break your heart and spirit. If your self-esteem decreases, you are easier to punish. And he knows exactly how to make you feel miserable.
One clue is that only his needs count. Remember: this person is insatiably greedy. Your praise is never superlative enough — he may eventually say blatant things like “You don’t appreciate me enough” or “I think I deserve more admiration.”
Another give-away is that he never gives you gifts — or if he does, those gifts are really about him. He doesn’t make the slightest attempt to fulfill your needs — of which he isn’t even aware. One exception is the narcissist who is an expert seducer, who at the beginning of the relationship will shower you with attention and expensive gifts. He wants you to fall madly in love with him. Once you’re hooked, you exist only to feed his insatiable ego.
Simply finding yourself exhausted and feeling less worthy after interacting with this type of lover are indeed excellent clues that you are dealing with the perpetually needy, hungry ghost type of vampire.
The most dangerous type of narcissist is the sado-narcissist, who doesn’t hesitate to be cruel and has the drive to destroy those who fail to show incessant admiration. Sado-narcissists may be older rich men who prey on impoverished young girls. Whatever it may be, at the first sign of abuse, run for your life.
The second category is simply the ALCOHOLIC, regardless of personality. He uses some of the same manipulative tricks that a narcissist uses, but for him the most important thing in the world is not being admired, but simply . . . alcohol. You’re not a fraction as important to him as a bottle of his favorite bourbon or whatever the poison of choice happens to be.
Never, never try to “save” an alcoholic. You can’t. Remember: this is a vampire who will drain you of your time, energy, creativity, and possibly even money. Run for your life.
Now, this may seem like a hard-hearted, un-Christian attitude — and the vampire may use this argument to try to keep you from withdrawing. But you need to think in terms of self-defense. You have your life to live, your goals to accomplish. You need a mutually nurturing love, not a vampirical, exploitative relationship. You need someone reliable, not a chaos maker.
It’s good to remember that narcissism or alcoholism or other addictive/personality disorders may stem from a combination of genes and trauma. No need to blame and judge. If you manage to feel compassion for them, that’s beautiful. Nevertheless, there is an absolute need to protect yourself. You have to be mercilessly firm and exclude them from your life.
Generally, as we live and learn, one of the things we learn is how to recognize a toxic person underneath their superficial charm fairly quickly, so we don’t engage in any close relationship with them — nothing that would eventually require changing your phone number.
And don’t worry that you’re just “abandoning” people who basically need help. Alcoholics have the AA to turn to, and other organizations dedicated to dealing with that particular addiction. Narcissists could go into therapy, but generally don’t want to, since that would threaten their grandiosity. But narcissism is a matter of degree, and those with a relatively mild version of the disorder may become genuinely motivated not to hurt their families; the right therapists can do some good here.
“Don’t try to save them. Turn them over to specialists” is a great piece of self-defense advice.
Remember that Dracula asked, "Do you cross this threshold of your own free will?" Once we are adults, then no matter how starved for love we may be, we should have enough common sense to recognize an abusive relationship, and enough independence and resourcefulness to leave it. There is no glory in being an alcoholic's girlfriend. No glory in being a victim, period.
Wolfsbane is supposed to be to werewolves what garlic is to vampires. It belongs to the highly toxic aconite family (Aconitum)
THE ORIGIN OF HALLOWEEN
~ Halloween and many of the traditions surrounding it can be traced back at least two millennia, to the Celtic festival of Samhain.
Clearly, much has changed since then; across ancient Britain and Ireland, Oct. 31 was more than an excuse for fun and frivolity. “To examine the history of Halloween,” writes the historian Nicholas Rogers, “is to recognize that it is not a holiday that has been celebrated the same way over the centuries, nor one whose meaning is fixed.” For the Celts it was a shift of season that marked the border between summer and winter, between life and death, and between our earthly realm and the underworld.
Samhain (pronounced SAH-win) came after harvest time but before the cold, desolate months. Rogers describes it as a period of “supernatural intensity heralding the onset of winter.” In that window, on the cusp of enclosing darkness, the Celts believed that the veil separating the human and spirit worlds lifted.
Banshees, elves and other ghoulish creatures were thought to emerge from the sídh, a network of mystical mounds, to roam the countryside. Ghosts were thought to temporarily walk the land of the living on their journey to the afterlife. Unperturbed, villagers lit giant bonfires to ward off these spirits, donned animal skins and masks to evade their notice, and left food out to appease them. Celtic priests, called Druids, also believed the liminal status of Samhain helped them to prophesy about the future.
Overall, Rogers writes, “it represented a time out of time, a brief interval when the normal order of the universe is suspended.”
RESHAPED BY THE CHURCH
Ironically, though many modern Christians have denounced Halloween as satanic, its very name is derived from a Catholic holiday.
On May 13 of 609 C.E., Pope Boniface IV began an anniversary that would come to be known as All Saints’ Day — a time to honor saints and martyrs — when he dedicated the Pantheon in Rome as a church. Later, in the mid-eighth century, Pope Gregory III changed the date (perhaps strategically) to coincide with Samhain. Many scholars believe that as the church spread across Europe, it systematically supplanted local celebrations in an effort to assimilate the pagans under its dominion.
Thus, Nov. 1 was dedicated to all saints, or “hallows,” an archaic term for holy personages. The night preceding it, Oct. 31, came to be known as All Hallows’ Eve, a name shortened eventually to Halloween. A few centuries later, Nov. 2 was dubbed All Souls’ Day, an opportunity to remember the dead; this evolution meshed well with the Celts’ longstanding practices at that time of year.
Still, the festival clung to many of its old ideas throughout this religious blending and Samhain’s influence never fully vanished from the newly Christian holiday. Throughout the Middle Ages, the fire ceremonies and masquerades remained, although entirely new rituals arose as well.
Trick-or-treating, for example, has roots in the medieval practice of “souling.” Poor supplicants went door to door, offering to pray for souls in purgatory in exchange for food (typically “soul cakes”). They often carried hollowed-out turnips with candles inside, the forebears of jack-o-lanterns.
In later years, especially in Ireland and Scotland, the occasion drew hordes of mischievous revelers to the streets. There they played pranks, particularly on unlucky and detested neighbors. “Mimicking the malignant spirits who were widely believed to be abroad,” Rogers writes, “gangs of youths blocked up chimneys, rampaged cabbage patches, battered doors, unhinged gates, and unstabled horses.”
HALLOWEEN THEN AND NOW
In some places, a synthesis of these Catholic, pagan and secular Halloween rites thrived into the modern era. Then, during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as millions of Irish immigrants made their way to America, Halloween’s popularity soared in the West as well.
Not everyone approved of the import, however. Many Puritans considered it “an unnecessary concession to the Antichrist,” Rogers writes. Others simply abhorred the rowdiness, vandalism and occasional violence it inspired. Authorities attempted to tamp down the merrymaking, resulting in the tamer method of trick-or-treating we see today.
At that point, Halloween was ripe for commercialization, with candy, costumes and decorations presenting major business opportunities. Oct. 31 — at various times a harvest festival, a requiem for the faithfully departed or a night of mischief — transformed into a full-fledged consumer holiday. This year, Americans are expected to spend a record $10 billion on their spooky paraphernalia and tasty treats.
Yet Halloween still bears the vestiges of its earlier forms, even the 2,000-year-old Samhain festival. When we celebrate this constantly reinvented tradition, we pay homage (knowingly or not) to the beliefs and worldviews of the long-gone groups that molded it. It’s easy to imagine that, as the veil between our world and theirs lifts at the close of the month, they might peer across and recognize something of themselves in us. ~
https://www.discovermagazine.com/planet-earth/how-halloween-sprang-from-an-ancient-pagan-festival?utm_source=acs&utm_medium=email&utm_email=ivy333%40cox.net&utm_campaign=News0_DSC_211021_000000
The witches dance; artist unknown
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WHY SOME PEOPLE ENJOY HORROR MOVIES WHILE OTHERS HATE THEM
~ While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer for why some people get a thrill out of horror films and some don’t, there are a few possible explanations. Here’s a breakdown, according to experts and research on the subject:
People who love scary movies experience stress differently.
Individuals who are more sensation seeking may gravitate toward scary movies because of how they interpret the body’s reaction to stress, according to Margee Kerr, a sociologist who studies fear and author of “Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear.” A fear-inducing movie will kick a person’s heart rate into high gear and make the body feel as though it needs to expend energy.
“Some might make a positive meaning out of that ― they feel really alive are grounded in their bodies, almost like how you feel after a really intense yoga class or something that focuses all attention into your body,” Kerr said. “For other people, they might interpret that almost like a panic attack, where they’re feeling a sense of loss of control over what their body is doing.”
People who hate them might be highly sensitive.
Highly sensitive people, or HSPs, can be easily overstimulated by their environment and also tend to be more empathetic than the average person. This means they may have a different or more intense physiological reaction to violent or scary movies, HSP researchers say.
CHILDHOOD EXPERIENCES AFFECT HOW SOMEONE FEELS ABOUT BEING SCARED.
People who had positive experiences when they were young with what researchers call “fun scary” ― an experience that startles, but doesn’t contribute to real fear ― already have an internal concept that frames certain scary activities in an exciting way, Kerr said.
“If their parents exposed them to just the right amount or kind of ‘fun’ as a kid ― so not taking them to see ‘It,’ for example, before they have a good a idea of what kind of monsters are real or not exposing them to rollercoasters too early ― can impact whether people will like the whole genre or not,” she explained.
Some people view scary movies as a way to connect with others.
Horror movies are enjoyable for some people when they’re shared with loved ones.
“It can be a really wonderful, social bonding experience,” Kerr said. “We do know that the bonds we make under stress often are more intense, especially with people we already have a positive association with. So if you’re going with your friends and you do something fun and intense and scary, you end up forming more layered, rich memories.”
In other words, whether or not a person likes watching a creepy clown on the big screen all depends on a confluence of factors ― most of which are out of their control.
So, if you need me, I’ll be over here hiding until Halloween is over. It’s not my fault I’m such a scaredy cat.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/scary-movies-love-hate_n_59b0205ee4b0b5e53102f44d
Oriana:
I'm in the category of highly sensitive people, so I abhor the horror genre. I get upset over violence and cruelty in the movies, especially cruelty to animals.
It makes sense that horror fans would be the sensation seekers and extraverts who seek more rather than less stimulation. I seek solitude and quiet. As for vicarious suffering, I've had plenty of of the real kind.
And I too will be in hiding on Halloween.
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WE DON’T NEED TO IMAGINE DEMONS AND MONSTERS. PEOPLE ARE FULLY CAPABLE OF ALL IMAGINABLE EVIL
John Guzlowski:
WHAT KEEPS A PERSON ALIVE?
I’m sure hope and courage were important in the camps, but probably what was most important was luck.
I asked both of my parents how they were able to survive the war, and they both said they didn’t know. My father didn’t know why he didn’t die when so many of his friends did.
He once told me a story about being hauled out of his barracks with hundreds of other prisoners for a roll call. It was a January night, snowing and below zero, and the men were in rags.
The guards started doing a roll call, and as they read the names men began to drop from the cold, falling to their knees. A man here and another there and then more.
When the guards finished the roll, there were dozens of dead prisoners in front of the barracks.
But they didn’t let the men go back in the barracks. Instead, the guards started the roll again, and more men collapsed. That roll call went on for six hours.
At the end, garbage trucks came to pick up the dead.
My father didn’t know what kept him alive that night. ~
Oriana:
Causing death by hypothermia during roll calls in the concentration camps was one of the common “killing them on the cheap” tricks used by the Nazis. The most extreme form of this was having the prisoners get naked, take a cold shower, and then stand outdoors in winter weather during a long roll call.
After all, the main purpose of the camps was to kill as many people as possible in an efficient way.
Who survived best? Jehovah’s Witnesses, nicknamed “Bible worms,” had astonishing endurance. For once, there was something to be said for religious fanaticism.
Musicians said they endured by playing their entire repertory in their mind, e.g. going through all of Chopin’s preludes and nocturnes, sonatas and so on.
Young people, in their teens and twenties, who were healthy to begin with, also had a better chance to survive.
And then yes, there was the factor of sheer luck. Some Kapos were less cruel than others. Some inmates had useful skills, and received double food portion as pay for doing skilled work.
Charles:
Buchenwald survivors, April 1945
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THE GREAT RESIGNATION
~ In April, the number of workers who quit their job in a single month broke an all-time U.S. record. Economists called it the “Great Resignation.” But America’s quittin’ spirit was just getting started. In July, even more people left their job. In August, quitters set yet another record. That Great Resignation? It just keeps getting greater.
“Quits,” as the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them, are rising in almost every industry. For those in leisure and hospitality, especially, the workplace must feel like one giant revolving door. Nearly 7 percent of employees in the “accommodations and food services” sector left their job in August. That means one in 14 hotel clerks, restaurant servers, and barbacks said sayonara in a single month. Thanks to several pandemic-relief checks, a rent moratorium, and student-loan forgiveness, everybody, particularly if they are young and have a low income, has more freedom to quit jobs they hate and hop to something else.
As I wrote in the spring, quitting is a concept typically associated with losers and loafers. But this level of quitting is really an expression of optimism that says, We can do better. You may have heard the story that in the golden age of American labor, 20th-century workers stayed in one job for 40 years and retired with a gold watch. But that’s a total myth. The truth is people in the 1960s and ’70s quit their jobs more often than they have in the past 20 years, and the economy was better off for it. Since the 1980s, Americans have quit less, and many have clung to crappy jobs for fear that the safety net wouldn’t support them while they looked for a new one. But Americans seem to be done with sticking it out. And they’re being rewarded for their lack of patience: Wages for low-income workers are rising at their fastest rate since the Great Recession. The Great Resignation is, literally, great.
For workers, that is. For the far smaller number of employers and bosses—who in pre-pandemic times were much more comfortable—this economy must feel like leaping from the frying pan of economic chaos, only to land in the fires of Manager Hell. Job openings are sky-high. Many positions are going unfilled for months. Meanwhile, supply chains are breaking down because of a hydra of bottlenecks. Running a company requires people and parts. With people quitting and parts missing, it must kinda suck to be a boss right now. (Oh, well!)
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Leisure and hospitality workers might be saying “to hell with this” on account of Americans deciding to behave like a pack of escaped zoo animals. Call it the Great Rudeness. Airlines in the United States reported that, by June 2021, the number of unruly passengers had already broken records—doubling the previous all-time pace of orneriness. The Atlantic writer Amanda Mull has chronicled America’s epidemic of bad behavior, from Trader Joe’s tirades to a poor Cape Cod restaurant that had to close briefly in the hope that its clientele would calm down after a few days in the time-out box. Cabin-fevered and filled with rage, American customers have poured into the late-pandemic economy with abandon, like the unfurling of so many angry pinched hoses. I don’t blame thousands of servers and clerks for deciding that suffering nonstop rudeness should never be a job requirement.
Meanwhile, the basic terms of employment are undergoing a Great Reset. The pandemic thrust many families into a homebound lifestyle reminiscent of the 19th-century agrarian economy—but this time with screens galore and online delivery. More families today work at home, cook at home, care for kids at home, entertain themselves at home, and even school their kids at home. The writer Aaron M. Renn has called this the rise of the DIY family, and it represents a new vision of work-life balance that is still coming into focus.
By eliminating the office as a physical presence in many (but not all!) families’ lives, the pandemic may have downgraded work as the centerpiece of their identity. In fact, the share of Americans who say they plan to work beyond the age of 62 has fallen to its lowest number since the Federal Reserve Bank of New York started asking the question, in 2014. Workism isn’t going away; for many, remote work will collapse the boundary between work and life that was once delineated by the daily commute. But this is a time of broad reconsideration.
Finally, there is a Great Reshuffling of people and businesses around the country. For decades, many measures of U.S. entrepreneurship declined. But business formation has surged since the beginning of the pandemic, and the largest category by far is e-commerce. This has coincided with an uptick in moves, especially to the suburbs of large metropolitan areas. Several major companies, such as Twitter, have announced permanent work-from-home policies, while others, such as Tesla, have moved their headquarters. Several years ago, I wrote that America had lost its “mojo,” because its citizens were less likely to switch jobs, move to another state, or create new companies than they were 30 (or 100) years ago. Well, so much for all that. America’s mojo is back, baby (yeah), and it may lead to a better-job revolution that outlasts the temporary measures, such as unemployment super-benefits and rent protection, that have nourished it.
As a general rule, crises leave an unpredictable mark on history. It didn’t seem obvious that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 would lead to a revolution in architecture, and yet, it without a doubt contributed directly to the invention of the skyscraper in Chicago. You might be equally surprised that one of the most important scientific legacies of World War II had nothing to do with bombs, weapons, or manufacturing; the conflict also accelerated the development of penicillin and flu vaccines. If you asked me to predict the most salutary long-term effects of the pandemic last year, I might have muttered something about urban redesign and office filtration.
But we may instead look back to the pandemic as a crucial inflection point in something more fundamental: Americans’ attitudes toward work. Since early last year, many workers have had to reconsider the boundaries between boss and worker, family time and work time, home and office.
One way to capture the meaning of any set of events is to consider what it would mean if they all happened in reverse. Imagine if quits fell to nearly zero. Business formation declined. In lieu of an urban exodus, everybody moved to a dense downtown. It would be, in other words, a movement of extraordinary consolidation and centralization: everybody working in urban areas for old companies that they never leave.
Look at what we have instead: a great pushing-outward. Migration to the suburbs accelerated. More people are quitting their job to start something new. Before the pandemic, the office served for many as the last physical community left, especially as church attendance and association membership declined. But now even our office relationships are being dispersed. The Great Resignation is speeding up, and it’s created a centrifugal moment in American economic history.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/10/great-resignation-accelerating/620382/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
Oriana:
People are also expecting higher wages. This goes even for daytime laborers who linger in one of lots as I leave Home Depot. Want a handy-man type job done around the house? It will cost you a lot more than in the past, when some were willing to work for $10/hr. Now even twice that won’t lure some of them.
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THE ADOPTION DILEMMA
~ Adopting a baby or toddler is much more difficult than it was a few decades ago. Of the nearly 4 million American children who are born each year, only about 18,000 are voluntarily relinquished for adoption. Though the statistics are unreliable, some estimates suggest that dozens of couples are now waiting to adopt each available baby. Since the mid-1970s—the end of the so-called baby-scoop era, when large numbers of unmarried women placed their children for adoption—the percentage of never-married women who relinquish their infants has declined from nearly 9 percent to less than 1 percent.
In 2010, Bethany Christian Services, the largest Protestant adoption agency in the U.S., placed more than 700 infants in private adoptions. Last year, it placed fewer than 300. International adoptions have not closed the gap. The number of children American parents adopt each year from abroad has declined rapidly too, from 23,000 in 2004 (an all-time high) to about 3,000 in 2019.
Plenty of children who aren’t babies need families, of course. More than 100,000 children are available for adoption from foster care. But adoptive parents tend to prefer children who are what some in the adoption world call “AYAP”—as young as possible. When I recently searched AdoptUSKids, the nationwide, government-funded website for foster-care adoptions, only about 40 kids under age 5, out of the 4,000 registered, appeared in my search. Many of those 40 had extensive medical needs or were part of a sibling group—a sign that the child is in even greater need of a stable family, but also a more challenging experience for their adoptive parents.
At a glance, this shortage of adoptable babies may seem like a problem, and certainly for people who desperately want to adopt a baby, it feels like one. But this trend reflects a number of changing social and geopolitical attitudes that have combined to shrink the number of babies or very young children available for adoption. Over the past few decades, many people—including those with strong commitments to the idea of infant adoption—have reconsidered its value to children.
Though in the short term this may be painful for parents who wish to adopt infants, in the long term, it might be better for some children and their birth families. Many babies in the developing world who once would have been brought to America will now be raised in their home country instead. And Americans who were planning to adopt may have to refocus their energies on older, vulnerable foster children—or change their plans entirely. Infant adoption was once seen as a heartwarming win-win for children and their adoptive parents. It’s not that simple.
For much of American history, placing a child for adoption was an obligation, not a choice, for poor, single women. In the decades after World War II, more than 3 million young pregnant women were “funneled into an often-coercive system they could neither understand nor resist,” Gabrielle Glaser wrote in her recent book, American Baby. They lived with strangers as servants or were hidden away in maternity homes until they gave birth, at which time they were pressured into closed adoptions, in which birth mothers and their babies have no contact.
Data on adoption are and have always been fuzzy and incomplete; for decades, no one tracked many of the adoptions that were happening in the U.S., and not all states reported their adoption figures. “There are no valid numbers from the ’40s and ’50s” because “just about all of these transfers existed in a realm of secrecy and shame, all around,” the historian Rickie Solinger told me. Still, adoption researchers generally agree that adoptions of children by people who aren’t their relatives increased gradually from about 34,000 in 1951 to their peak of 89,000 in 1970, before declining to about 69,000 in 2014—a number that includes international adoptions and foster-care adoptions. Given population growth, the decline from 1970 indicates a 50 percent per capita decrease.
What happened? Starting in the ’70s, single white women became much less likely to relinquish their babies at birth: Nearly a fifth of them did so before 1973; by 1988, just 3 percent did. (Single Black women were always very unlikely to place their children for adoption, because many maternity homes excluded Black women.) In 1986, an adoption director at the New York Foundling Hospital told The New York Times that though “there was a time, about 20 years ago, when New York Foundling had many, many white infants,” the number of white infants had “been very scarce for a number of years.”
Still, throughout this era, American families adopted thousands of infants and toddlers from foreign countries. In the ’50s, a mission to rescue Korean War orphans sparked a trend of international adoptions by Americans. Over the years, international adoptions increased, and Americans went on to adopt more than 100,000 kids from South Korea, Romania, and elsewhere from 1953 to 1991. In 1992, China opened its orphanages to Americans and allowed them to take in thousands of girls abandoned because of the country’s one-child policy.
But to many American evangelical Christians, these numbers were still too low to combat what they considered to be a global orphan crisis. During the ’90s, evangelicals in particular kindled a new foreign- and domestic-adoption boom, as the journalist Kathryn Joyce detailed in her 2013 book, The Child Catchers, which was critical of the trend. In the late 1990s, Joyce reported, representatives from Bethany Christian Services and other adoption agencies occasionally pressured single women to relinquish their babies, gave them false impressions about the nature of adoption, and threatened them when they changed their mind. (Bethany cannot verify the negative accounts of its practices that appear in Joyce’s book, Nathan Bult, the group’s senior vice president of public and government affairs, told me. In an interview, Joyce stood by her reporting.)
A major 2007 meeting of Christian groups led to a “campaign to enroll more Christians as adoptive and foster parents,” the Los Angeles Times’ Stephanie Simon reported that year. The practice of adoption was seen as parallel to evangelical Christians’ “adoption by God” when they are born again. American Christians went on to adopt tens of thousands of children from other countries. “Early on, there was a strong belief that adoption could often be the best outcome for a child whose mom may have felt unable to parent,” Kris Faasse, who ran several of Bethany’s programs from 2000 to 2019, told me.
In recent years, though, international adoption has slowed to a trickle because of changes abroad and within American adoption agencies. During the foreign-adoption boom, most of the children adopted from abroad found happy homes in the U.S. Some, however, turned out to not really be orphans, but instead children placed in orphanages temporarily by their impoverished parents. This sparked reforms and had a chilling effect on their home countries’ policies. Some of the most popular source countries for adoptable children—including Russia, Guatemala, and Ethiopia—shut down their adoption programs years ago because of corruption scandals or tensions with the U.S. government. China expanded its domestic-adoption program and reversed its one-child policy in 2015, dramatically reducing the number of girls who were relinquished for adoption.
Then, last year, Bethany closed its international-adoption program, instead focusing on its in-country foster-care and adoption programs. (In other words, Ethiopians, not Americans, will adopt Ethiopian children.) The Christian Alliance for Orphans, which helped launch the American Christian adoption boom 14 years ago, now says that the priority in international adoption should be keeping a child with her family or, failing that, placing her with a stranger in her home country, and taking the child abroad only if the first two options aren’t available. “And always, always, in that order,” Jedd Medefind, the president of the Christian Alliance for Orphans, told me recently.
Even Joyce, the Child Catchers author and a critic of the evangelical adoption movement, says the groups have changed. About four years ago, Joyce appeared on a Christian Alliance for Orphans panel, and even then she noticed more talk of family preservation. The adoption movement had seemingly grappled with the criticism, she told me. Plus, there are now so few international adoptions that, “on a practical level, it probably just doesn’t make as much sense to have a movement that is advocating for that so hard.”
As international adoptions have declined, parallel cultural changes have led to a reduction in American babies who would, in an earlier era, likely have been relinquished. The American birth rate is at an all-time low. Teens, who are less likely to be ready to raise children than older women, are getting pregnant at the lowest rates ever. Single motherhood is less taboo, so although unwed women, who were once more likely than married people to place their children for adoption, are now having 40 percent of all babies, for the most part they are choosing to raise their children themselves.
Some imagine that outlawing abortion might create a rise in adoptions, but that’s unlikely. In one study, only 9 percent of the women who were denied an abortion chose adoption. Even as single parenthood has become less stigmatized, placing a child for adoption has become more so. Adoption is “an extremely rare pregnancy decision,” Gretchen Sisson, a sociologist at the University of California at San Francisco, told me.
And in addition to rethinking international adoption, some groups are also reconsidering whether single, poor American women should be encouraged to place their babies for adoption. They seemed to have absorbed the growing concern that people of color are surrendering their children to white adoptive parents, the bad press about families who weren’t equipped to raise their newly adopted children, and the idea that “families belong together” should apply to poor people too. Over the past 20 years, “there was a shift,” Faasse, the former Bethany staffer, told me, “toward ensuring that mom was fully informed of her options ... ‘Let’s not just look at what your decision is today, but what will it look like in the future?’”
Bethany is now trying to help struggling American birth mothers parent their own children, as growing numbers of single women aim to do. In 2019, the group created a special program for drug-addicted birth moms intended to help them stay with their babies. Another program connects struggling birth parents with supportive families, with the aim of preventing the removal of the birth parents’ children. “At Bethany, we want to do all we can do, first and foremost, to keep kids with their birth families when it is safe and possible to do so,” Cheri Williams, Bethany’s senior vice president of domestic programs, told me. The next best choice after that, she said, isn’t adoption by strangers, but rather by the child’s relatives.
These changes won’t eliminate abuses within the adoption industry. A process that involves people surrendering their biological children is bound to be fraught. Still, a single, pregnant woman is likely to have a different experience with an organization like Bethany today than she would have decades ago. “Expanding the numbers of children who are adopted domestically, for the sake of expanding the numbers of children who are adopted domestically, is not something that we want to be doing,” Bult, at Bethany, told me. “An expectant mom should never be coerced into making an adoption plan for her child,” he added.
To adoption reformers, the practice is now largely seen as a way to provide families for older, special-needs children rather than a way to provide healthy babies to people who want to parent. The result is often a difficult, expensive process for couples who want to adopt a baby or toddler. Adopting a newborn can cost $45,000 or more. “There is increasingly an advertising bid war to find birth parents,” Daniel Nehrbass, the president of Nightlight Christian Adoptions, told me. A cottage industry of adoption “facilitators” has sprung up that “may charge $25,000, which is basically an advertising fee to the family in order to find the birth mom.”
But aspiring adoptive parents who are disappointed by a difficult system might not get the chance to see the other side of these changes—the one in which poor, single women get to parent their own babies, even if they never thought they could. Bult introduced me to Brijon Ellis, a 24-year-old in Ypsilanti, Michigan, who exemplifies this shift. When Ellis got pregnant at 15, she told me, a family member pressured her into placing her daughter into a closed adoption through Bethany. After signing the adoption paperwork, Ellis remembers crying so hard in the hospital that her face swelled.
Three years later, at 18, Ellis got pregnant again, this time with twins. Ellis called Dawn, the same Bethany social worker who had arranged her daughter’s adoption, to learn about her options. But this time, whenever Dawn mentioned adoption, Ellis grew teary-eyed and equivocal. Dawn picked up on her reluctance, Ellis said.
Instead, Dawn told her about Safe Families, a Bethany program that gives struggling birth parents clothes, food, child care, and other support. Ellis carried her twin boys to term, and they are now 5 years old and living with her. “As soon as I figured out and made a decision that I was going to have these boys, my mindset changed,” Ellis told me. “I became more wise. I had this wisdom just fall over me.” She seemed pleasantly surprised at her own ability to be a mother, once she finally got the chance. ~
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/adopt-baby-cost-process-hard/620258/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
There has been increasing awareness that adoption is traumatic for both the biological mother and the child (even infants can sense that there’s something wrong and grieve; and we know of endless tales of adopted children almost heroically searching for their biological family in spite of closed records; sometimes it’s the biological mother who tries and tries to find her child). What shocked me is not that more single women are keeping their babies, but the cost of adoption. “You’d think they’d be giving away the children for free,” a friend of mine said. Given the cost of foster care (foster parents are paid for each child they foster), you’d indeed think that the process of adoption would be made easy and inexpensive.
What this article doesn’t mention is the fact that these days fewer people seem to desire children, their own or adopted ones. I remember an article in a women’s magazine that asked if you REALLY want a child, or are you just responding to parental and social pressure (parents can't seem to wait for grandbabies -- perhaps because they've been told that being a grandparent is much more fun than being a parent). One of the questions was, “If it turned out that you couldn’t bear children, would you consider adopting one?” My instant reply was, “No, never; of course not.” And that said it all; it was tremendously enlightening.
(P.S. I've heard some sad stories of adoption, with adoptive parents being very disappointed with the child -- whose mother may have been drinking or taking drugs during pregnancy, causing fetal brain damage, or simply the child turning out to be so unlike what the parents desired: e.g. educated parents ending up with a child with no intellectual interests or abilities. Of course this may happen with one's own biological progeny, but adoption increases the risk of a mismatch.
Finally, though I strongly agree that a pregnant woman should not be pressured to give up her child for adoption, I am dismayed that some single women choose to get pregnant and deliberately become single mothers. This implies that the woman doesn't recognize the great benefits for the child of having a father -- for young girls as well as young boys.)
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IS MARX STILL RELEVANT?
~ “The new modes of production, communication, and distribution had also created enormous wealth. But there was a problem. The wealth was not equally distributed. Ten per cent of the population possessed virtually all of the property; the other ninety per cent owned nothing. As cities and towns industrialized, as wealth became more concentrated, and as the rich got richer, the middle class began sinking to the level of the working class.
Soon, in fact, there would be just two types of people in the world: the people who owned property and the people who sold their labor to them. As ideologies disappeared which had once made inequality appear natural and ordained, it was inevitable that workers everywhere would see the system for what it was, and would rise up and overthrow it. The writer who made this prediction was, of course, Karl Marx, and the pamphlet was “The Communist Manifesto.” He is not wrong yet.
Marx was also what Michel Foucault called the founder of a discourse. An enormous body of thought is named after him. Marx saw that modern free-market economies, left to their own devices, produce gross inequalities, and he transformed a mode of analysis that goes all the way back to Socrates—turning concepts that we think we understand and take for granted inside out—into a resource for grasping the social and economic conditions of our own lives.
Apart from his loyal and lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels, almost no one would have guessed, in 1883, the year Marx died, at the age of sixty-four, how influential he would become. Eleven people showed up for the funeral. For most of his career, Marx was a star in a tiny constellation of radical exiles and failed revolutionaries (and the censors and police spies who monitored them) but almost unknown outside it. The books he is famous for today were not exactly best-sellers. “The Communist Manifesto” vanished almost as soon as it was published and remained largely out of print for twenty-four years; “Capital” was widely ignored when the first volume came out, in 1867. After four years, it had sold a thousand copies, and it was not translated into English until 1886.
One reason for Marx’s relative obscurity is that only toward the end of his life did movements to improve conditions for workers begin making gains in Europe and the United States. To the extent that those movements were reformist rather than revolutionary, they were not Marxist (although Marx did, in later years, speculate about the possibility of a peaceful transition to communism). With the growth of the labor movement came excitement about socialist thought and, with that, an interest in Marx.
Still, as Alan Ryan writes in his characteristically lucid and concise introduction to Marx’s political thought, “Karl Marx: Revolutionary and Utopian” (Liveright), if Vladimir Lenin had not arrived in Petrograd in 1917 and taken charge of the Russian Revolution, Marx would probably be known today as “a not very important nineteenth-century philosopher, sociologist, economist, and political theorist.” The Russian Revolution made the world take Marx’s criticism of capitalism seriously. After 1917, communism was no longer a utopian fantasy.
Engels, who was two years younger, had the same politics as Marx. Soon after they met, he wrote his classic study “The Condition of the Working Class in England,” which ends by predicting a communist revolution. Engels’s father was a German industrialist in the textile business, an owner of factories in Barmen and Bremen and in Manchester, England, and although he disapproved of his son’s politics and the company he kept, he gave him a position at the Manchester factory. Engels hated the work, but he was good at it, as he was at most things. He went fox hunting with the gentry he despised, and made fun of Marx’s attempts to ride a horse. Engels eventually became a partner, and the income helped him keep Marx alive.
It’s true that Marx was highly doctrinaire, something that did not wear well with his compatriots in the nineteenth century, and that certainly does not wear well today, after the experience of the regimes conceived in his name. It therefore sounds perverse to say that Marx’s philosophy was dedicated to human freedom. But it was. Marx was an Enlightenment thinker: he wanted a world that is rational and transparent, and in which human beings have been liberated from the control of external forces.
This was the essence of Marx’s Hegelianism. Hegel argued that history was the progress of humanity toward true freedom, by which he meant self-mastery and self-understanding, seeing the world without illusions—illusions that we ourselves have created. The Young Hegelians’ controversial example of this was the Christian God. (This is what Feuerbach wrote about.) We created God, and then pretended that God created us. We hypostatized our own concept and turned it into something “out there” whose commandments (which we made up) we struggle to understand and obey. We are supplicants to our own fiction.
Concepts like God are not errors. History is rational: we make the world the way we do for a reason. We invented God because God solved certain problems for us. But, once a concept begins impeding our progress toward self-mastery, it must be criticized and transcended, left behind. Otherwise, like the members of the Islamic State today, we become the tools of our Tool.
What makes it hard to discard the tools we have objectified is the persistence of the ideologies that justify them, and which make what is only a human invention seem like “the way things are.” Undoing ideologies is the task of philosophy. Marx was a philosopher. The subtitle of “Capital” is “Critique of Political Economy.” The uncompleted book was intended to be a criticism of the economic concepts that make social relations in a free-market economy seem natural and inevitable, in the same way that concepts like the great chain of being and the divine right of kings once made the social relations of feudalism seem natural and inevitable.
Marx thought that industrial capitalism, too, was created for a good reason: to increase economic output—something that “The Communist Manifesto” celebrates. The cost, however, is a system in which one class of human beings, the property owners (in Marxian terms, the bourgeoisie), exploits another class, the workers (the proletariat).
Capitalists don’t do this because they are greedy or cruel (though one could describe their behavior that way, as Marx almost invariably did). They do it because competition demands it. That’s how the system operates. Industrial capitalism is a Frankenstein’s monster that threatens its own creators, a system that we constructed for our own purposes and is now controlling us.
Marx was a humanist. He believed that we are beings who transform the world around us in order to produce objects for the benefit of all. That is our essence as a species. A system that transforms this activity into “labor” that is bought and used to aggrandize others is an obstacle to the full realization of our humanity. Capitalism is fated to self-destruct, just as all previous economic systems have self-destructed. The working-class revolution will lead to the final stage of history: communism, which, Marx wrote, “is the solution to the riddle of history and knows itself as this solution.”
(. . . ) To us, [specialization] seems an obviously efficient way to organize work, from automobile assembly lines to “knowledge production” in universities. But Marx considered the division of labor one of the evils of modern life. (So did Hegel.) It makes workers cogs in a machine and deprives them of any connection with the product of their labor. “Man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him,” as Marx put it. In a communist society, he wrote, “nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes.” It will be possible “to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner . . . without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman, or critic.”
This often quoted passage sounds fanciful, but it is at the heart of Marx’s thought. Human beings are naturally creative and sociable. A system that treats them as mechanical monads is inhumane. But the question is, How would a society without a division of labor produce sufficient goods to survive? Nobody will want to rear the cattle (or clean the barn); everyone will want to be the critic. (Believe me.) As Marx conceded, capitalism, for all its evils, had created abundance. He seems to have imagined that, somehow, all the features of the capitalist mode of production could be thrown aside and abundance would magically persist.
. . . Piketty says that for thirty years after 1945 a high rate of growth in the advanced economies was accompanied by a rise in incomes that benefitted all classes. Severe wealth inequality came to seem a thing of the past (which is why, in 1980, people could quite reasonably call Marx’s predictions mistaken). It now appears that those thirty years were an anomaly. The Depression and the two world wars had effectively wiped out the owners of wealth, but the thirty years after 1945 rebooted the economic order.
“The very high level of private wealth that has been attained since the nineteen-eighties and nineteen-nineties in the wealthy countries of Europe and in Japan,” Piketty says, “directly reflects the Marxian logic.” Marx was correct that there is nothing naturally egalitarian about modern economies left to themselves. As Piketty puts it, “There is no natural, spontaneous process to prevent destabilizing, inegalitarian forces from prevailing permanently.”
The tendency of the system to increase inequality was certainly true in Marx’s own century. By 1900, the richest one per cent of the population in Britain and France owned more than fifty per cent of those nations’ wealth; the top ten per cent owned ninety per cent. We are approaching those levels again today. In the United States, according to the Federal Reserve, the top ten per cent of the population owns seventy-two per cent of the wealth, and the bottom fifty per cent has two per cent. About ten per cent of the national income goes to the top two hundred and forty-seven thousand adults (one-thousandth of the adult population).
This is not a problem restricted to the rich nations. Global wealth is also unequally distributed, and by the same ratios or worse. Piketty does not predict a worldwide working-class revolution; he does remark that this level of inequality is “unsustainable.” He can foresee a time when most of the planet is owned by billionaires.
Marx was also not wrong about the tendency of workers’ wages to stagnate as income for the owners of capital rises. For the first sixty years of the nineteenth century—the period during which he began writing “Capital”—workers’ wages in Britain and France were stuck at close to subsistence levels. It can be difficult now to appreciate the degree of immiseration in the nineteenth-century industrial economy. In one period in 1862, the average workweek in a Manchester factory was eighty-four hours.
It appears that wage stagnation is back. After 1945, wages rose as national incomes rose, but the income of the lowest earners peaked in 1969, when the minimum hourly wage in the United States was $1.60. That is the equivalent of $10.49 today, when the national minimum wage is $7.25. And, as wages for service-sector jobs decline in earning power, the hours in the workweek increase, because people are forced to take more than one job.
The rhetoric of our time, the time of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, Brexit, and popular unrest in Europe, appears to have a Marxist cast. Sanders’s proposals to reduce inequality are straight out of Piketty: tax wealth and give more people access to knowledge. Trump, since he admires authoritarian personalities, might be pleased to know that Marx supported free trade on a “the worse things get” theory: by driving wages lower, free trade increases the impoverishment of the working class and leads more quickly to the revolution. In the terms used everywhere today, on the left, on the right, and in the press: the system is “rigged” to reward “the élites.” Marx called them “the ruling class.”
Still, in the political confusion, we may feel that we are seeing something that has not been seen in countries like Britain and the United States since before 1945: people debating what Marx would call the real nature of social relations. The political earth is being somewhat scorched. And, as politics continues to shed its traditional restraints, ugly as it is to watch, we may get a clearer understanding of what those relations are.
They may not be entirely economic. A main theme of Stedman Jones’s book is that Marx and Engels, in their obsession with class, ignored the power of other forms of identity. One of these is nationalism. For Marx and Engels, the working-class movement was international. But today we seem to be seeing, among the voters for Brexit, for example, a reversion to nationalism and, in the United States, what looks like a surge of nativism.
Stedman Jones also argues that Marx and Engels failed to appreciate the extent to which the goal of working-class agitation in nineteenth-century Britain was not ownership of the means of production but political inclusion, being allowed to vote. When that was achieved, unrest subsided.
Money matters to people, but status matters more, and precisely because status is something you cannot buy. Status is related to identity as much as it is to income. It is also, unfortunately, a zero-sum game. The struggles over status are socially divisive, and they can resemble class warfare.
Ryan, in his book on Marx, makes an observation that Marx himself might have made. “The modern republic,” he says, “attempts to impose political equality on an economic inequality it has no way of alleviating.” This is a relatively recent problem, because the rise of modern capitalism coincided with the rise of modern democracies, making wealth inequality inconsistent with political equality. But the unequal distribution of social resources is not new. One of the most striking points Piketty makes is that, as he puts it, “in all known societies in all times, the least wealthy half of the population has owned virtually nothing,” and the top ten per cent has owned “most of what there is to own.”
Inequality has been with us for a long time. Industrial capitalism didn’t reverse it in the nineteenth century, and finance capitalism is not reversing it in the twenty-first. The only thing that can reverse it is political action aimed at changing systems that seem to many people to be simply the way things have to be. We invented our social arrangements; we can alter them when they are working against us. There are no gods out there to strike us dead if we do.” ~
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/karl-marx-yesterday-and-today?mbid=social_facebook_aud_dev_kwjunsub-karl-marx-yesterday-and-today&kwp_0=252969&kwp_4=961667&kwp_1=461749
Oriana:
Yes, criticizing after dinner seems to come naturally to us. Cleaning toilets, not as much -- though there are people who enjoy cleaning more than anything else. It's hard work, but the results can be quite fulfilling.
Given how different we all are, no one is likely to come up with a formula for a social system that will make everyone happy. Meanwhile we've been waiting: will capitalism really self-destruct? Marx was at his best describing the booms and busts cycles of capitalism, but now that the government and business are heavily intertwined, all bets are off. I enjoy watching the solar panels increase in my neighborhood, and quite forget about Marx, even though his historical importance has been enormous.
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SLAVOY ŽIŽEK ON THE PARADOX OF CALVINISM AND RETROACTIVE PREDESTINATION — “THE HIGHEST FREEDOM IS CHOOSING YOUR NECESSITY”
After something happens, people assume it HAD TO happen. Did World War One (and consequently World War Two) had to happen? Of course -- look at the high tensions between the European countries. Look at the nationalist propaganda. Never mind that those tensions were at times even higher before then, the propaganda just as strident.
The existentialists put it this way: “The present changes the past.” What happened makes us see the past in a new perspective.
I’ll never forget a lecture on Calvinism given by an old-school Calvinist: if you accept god’s existence, and that everything is god’s will, the logic is iron-clad. I was disturbed by the lecture, and approached the minister afterwards. I asked, “How do you know if you are one of the Elect?” And he unforgettably replied, “If you join our church, you can be sure you are one of the Elect.” Joining the church was proof alone. Retroactively, all could then be interpreted in terms of one’s Election!
I noticed something of that process (the present changes the past) at work when I began to give more and more time to poetry. The question at some point becomes, “Am I a real poet?” If you say Yes, then you are very prone to start reading your past retroactively so that everything that happened had to happen just to make you a poet. All your suffering is redeemed: a poet needs a certain amount of trauma to become a real poet. She needs exactly the parents she had, the good and bad teachers, the illnesses, the paradise of summers in the countryside. And so on with just about anything. It’s retroactive predestination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOUGR1SsTD0
But Slavoy bypasses a simpler explanation for the Calvinist paradox: nothing you do on earth can assure your place among the Elect, predetermined at the beginning of the world, and yet you work like crazy. If you spent time pondering predestination, depression loomed large — very few would enter heaven, according to Luke 13.
One escape is to work like crazy so you don’t have the time and energy to ponder your afterlife. Sundays would still be grim, but survivable when you focused on the fact that Monday would be coming soon. And, as a bonus, and this is what Zizek focuses on, your dedication to work would be a sign that you are probably one of the Elect.
FATHERS OF THE CALVINIST REFORMATION: Statues of William Farel, John Calvin, Theodore Beza, and John Knox at the centre of the International Monument to the Reformation in Geneva, Switzerland
Church membership in the U.S. has fallen below the majority (47%) for the first time in nearly a century. It was 70% in 1999.
But even that minority can be trouble. As Barry Goldwater said:
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the Republican party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them.”
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BENEFITS OF WEIGHT LIFTING BEYOND MUSCLE BUILDING
~ We hate to sound like a broken record, but it really is crucial to incorporate lifting weights into your workout regimen. In fact, when it comes to exercise for older adults, strength training actually trumps cardio because preserving muscle is more important than losing fat as you age.
“Every decade, starting in your mid 30s, you lose a percentage of muscle, which affects your metabolism, balance, and ability to brace yourself in the event of an injury,” explains Larysa DiDio, a certified personal trainer and Prevention's contributing fitness editor. “By weight training, you build more muscle to protect your body against injury.”
You’ll lose weight and burn more calories
While cardio can help you get rid of belly fat, lifting weights helps you build more muscle, which can also help you burn more calories. That’s because muscles are metabolically active, meaning they burn calories even when you're not exercising. “In fact, muscle tissue burns seven to 10 calories per pound daily, while fat burns only two to three calories per pound daily,” DiDio explains.
What’s more, a 2017 study in Obesity suggests that weight training combined with a healthy, low-calorie diet, can help preserve lean muscle mass that's lost through aerobic workouts. “When weight loss occurs in the absence of strength training, all facets of body composition are lost,” Reed says. “You lose some weight in fat, some in muscle, and some in bone—and it's unfavorable to lose weight that's coming from both muscle and bone.” That's why strength training is so important. When people do strength training to lose weight, the majority of the weight loss is fat loss.
You’ll protect your bones
As you age, your bones become more brittle and weaker, especially if you're post-menopausal, which is due to lower estrogen levels—the hormone responsible for maintaining bone mass. But lifting weights can help you build bone mineral density through Wolff's Law, which states that bones can grow in response to forces that are placed upon it. In other words, creating pressure on your joints through weight-bearing exercises can actually help you build stronger, healthier bones.
“Strength training involves muscles contracting against the bones they’re surrounding,” Reed explains. “This force applied to the bones helps improve bone density over time.”
In fact, an October 2017 study from the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research shows that high-intensity resistance training exercises, like deadlifts, overhead presses, and back squats, can help improve bone mineral density in women with osteopenia and osteoporosis.
You’ll manage stress and boost your mood
Had a hard day at work and need to release some tension? Time to pick up those weights. Just like any form of exercise, strength training can enhance your mood by releasing feel-good hormones called endorphins.
Recent research also suggests that exercise, including weight training, may help protect against Alzheimer’s and dementia. Researchers from Columbia University Irving Medical Center discovered that the hormone irisin, which is released during exercise, may help promote neuronal growth in the hippocampus—the area of the brain dedicated to learning and memory.
“Any type of exercise is a mood booster, but weight training makes you feel stronger and it builds the back and neck muscles that are most directly associated with stress,” DiDio says.
You’ll improve your posture
If you have a desk job, chances are you’re dealing with a case of rounded shoulders and a hunched back, which place additional pressure on your low back. This can lead to bad posture and limited range of motion in the shoulders, which are the most flexible joint in the body.
But lifting weights can help reverse this by opening up the chest, strengthening the back muscles, and improving freedom of movement. “It also strengthens your core, which keeps the back in alignment and upright,” DiDio says.
Go for multi-joint compound exercises (think a squat to overhead press or a lateral lunge to twist), which can help you work in different planes of motion and muscle groups, saving you time and effort.
You’ll reduce back pain
There’s no one reason for back pain, but muscular imbalances, like weak knees and an unstable core, can contribute, among other things. Most people think aches and pain are due to strains, but sometimes, it’s a result of bad biomechanics. Your muscles work in a kinetic chain, so if there’s a weak link, it can often manifest into a bigger problem in different areas of the body. But by building total-body strength, you can bypass most injuries.
For example, if you have weak hip flexors, it also means you have weak glutes—their opposing muscles. And, “typically they [muscles] don't weaken evenly, so this can also throw your pelvis out of whack, which could affect your gait," DiDio says. "As weak and tight muscles tug and pull, they can cause imbalances and pain, which is your body telling you that something is wrong."
You’ll improve memory and brain health
A 2016 review from the British Journal of Sports Medicine shows that physical activity can help prevent or delay cognitive decline in people over 50, regardless of their current neurological state.
When you’re moving, your body pumps oxygen-rich blood to your brain, boosting neuroplasticity—your brain’s ability to create new neural connections and adjust to changes in environment. By increasing neuroplasticity, you can better handle stressful situations that come with life and stay sharp.
“Indeed, the American College of Sports Medicine has published several studies investigating the positive effects of different types of exercise on cognitive performance in older adults, and they agree that this is an area of research worthy of further pursuit,” Reed notes.
You’ll be better in tune with your body
There’s nothing like lifting a pair of weights to help you tune into your senses when you work out. Whether you’re doing an overhead press, a plank row, or a goblet squat, lifting weights creates greater awareness around using your breath to help you get the most out of each rep. Plus, doing complex moves can test your listening and cognitive skills—it takes some brain power to process a trainer's cues and execute a move properly!
https://getpocket.com/explore/item/7-incredible-benefits-of-lifting-weights-that-have-nothing-to-do-with-building-muscle?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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FOODS THAT HELP YOU FALL ASLEEP AND STAY ASLEEP
~ Choosing foods that provide sleep-inducing or sleep-enhancing nutrients can help you drift off to sleep more easily, wake up well-rested and feel more energized throughout the day.
SPINACH
This dark leafy green veggie is high in magnesium, which naturally relaxes the nerves and muscles, to calm the body and encourage sleep. Magnesium can also help prevent leg cramps, a common cause of nighttime waking. Additionally, spinach is a good source of calcium, which helps the brain use tryptophan to manufacture melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone; research suggests being calcium deficient may make it difficult to fall asleep.
NUTRITIONAL YEAST
Have you tried incorporating nutritional yeast into your diet? It’s surprisingly nutritious. This kind of yeast is rich in B vitamins – just 2 tablespoons contains more than the full daily value (DV) for vitamin B12 and 480% of the DV for vitamin B6. Vitamin B12 is crucial for the nervous system, and studies show that B12 intake is significantly correlated with duration of sleep. Vitamin B6 is necessary for the production of serotonin, and research suggests deficiencies can promote psychological distress and ensuing sleep disturbances.
Tip: Stir nutritional yeast into hummus.
HUMMUS
Chickpeas are rich in tryptophan, an amino acid that acts as a precursor to serotonin, which plays a crucial role in the modulation of sleep. Food sources of tryptophan may be even more effective than supplements: In one study, dietary tryptophan significantly reduced insomnia, especially when combined with complex carbohydrates. Because chickpeas contain both tryptophan and carbs, they’re a great food for promoting sleep. They’re also high in fiber: Studies show a low-fiber diet is associated with light, less-restorative sleep and more nighttime wakings.
ALMOND BUTTER
Almonds and other nuts are very high in magnesium – ¼ cup contains 24% of the DV – and rich in sleep-promoting tryptophan. They’re also high in potassium, which can significantly increase sleep efficiency and decrease awakenings after falling asleep, and B vitamins, which promote restful sleep.
CHERRIES
Tart cherries are a fantastic food to help you sleep. They’re naturally high in melatonin, which is critical in regulating the sleep- wake cycle. In one small double-blind, randomized study, volunteers who drank tart cherry juice for 7 days had significantly elevated melatonin levels and significant increases in total sleep time and sleep efficiency compared to a placebo. Another study published in the Journal of Medicinal Food found that tart cherry juice was as effective as the sleep herb valerian. Sweet cherries are also high in melatonin and may have many of the same sleep-promoting effects.
KIWI
Kiwi fruit are rich in sleep-promoting phytochemicals. In a study published in the Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, volunteers who ate two kiwi fruits an hour before bed for four weeks significantly decreased the amount of time it took to fall asleep and increased total sleep duration and sleep efficiency. Kiwi are high in serotonin (as are plantains, pineapple, banana, plums, walnuts and tomatoes), but because serotonin can’t cross the blood-brain barrier, it’s likely that the fruit’s high antioxidant content is responsible for its sleep-promoting activities: Studies show that poor sleep is linked with lower levels of antioxidants.
ORGANIC CORN
Skip non-organic ears of corn in favor of the organic variety, and you just might achieve better sleep. Organic corn is high in carbs, which can promote sleep when eaten the right way. Carbs stimulate insulin, which indirectly makes tryptophan more available; higher-glycemic carbs are more effective than low-glycemic carbs. But sugary carbs like cookies and candy can upset blood sugar and interrupt sleep later in the night. Corn is a good choice because it has a moderate glycemic index – a measure of how quickly or slowly a food causes increases in blood glucose levels.
Oriana:
I'd say forget corn, and concentrate instead on getting adequate magnesium (magnesium citrate is my favorite) -- and, perhaps more important, be sure to get enough physical activity during the day, and sufficient time outdoors for light exposure. Positive emotions also help. If nothing else, count your blessings as you prepare for bedtime. Still, having one more reason to eat kiwis and cherries is nice.
ending on beauty:
REMEMBERING
There are threads of old sound heard over and over
phrases of Shakespeare or Mozart the slender
wands of the auroras playing out from them
into dark time the passing of a few
migrants high in the night far from the ancient flocks
far from the rest of the words far from the instruments
~ W.S. Merwin, Migrations
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