Old Montreal afternoon; photo by Misha Iossel
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misspelling mourning and morning. But also, before they arrive,
the cat of imagination into each room. What is lineage,
Once, when I thought I had decided not to have children,
I told my friend D that and she said, What if you want to kill
In the myth of La Llorona, she drowns her children
Now teach me poetry.
~ Ada Limón, second section of The Hurting Kind
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RILKE: FOR THE SAKE OF A SINGLE POEM
For poems are not, as people imagine, simply feelings (those one has early enough) – they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, one must see many cities, people, and things. One must know the animals, one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers open in the morning.
One must be able to think back to roads in unknown regions, to unexpected meetings and to partings one had long seen coming; to days of childhood that are still unexplained, to parents whom one had to hurt when they brought one some joy and did not grasp it (it was a joy for someone else); to childhood illnesses that so strangely begin with such a number of profound and grave transformations, to days in rooms withdrawn and quiet and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to nights of travel that rushed along on high and flew with all the stars—and it is not yet enough if one may think of all this.
One must have memories of many nights of love, none of which was like the others, of the screams of women in labor, and of light, white, sleeping women in childbed, closing again. But one must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open window and the fitful noises. And still it is not enough to have memories. One must be able to forget them when they are many, and one must have the great patience to wait until they come again.
For it is not yet the memories themselves. Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance, and gesture, nameless, and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves—not till then can it happen that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes forth from them.
~ Rilke, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge.”
Oriana:
Sometimes reading a classic text is so refreshing: those details again, and the advice that never grows old.
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WILLIAM LOGAN ON SHARON OLDS AND ADA LIMÓN
~ Sharon Olds has grabbed many of the brass rings an American poet could ever desire; but it’s hard to imagine that, half a century from now, her driven, repetitive, obsessive work will still captivate a large audience, if poetry has any audience at all. Her work is prosy in the approved way—she stands naked before the reader, showing everything and revealing nothing. She knows little about suggestion, the strongest form of poetic intimacy. In her new book, Balladz, she blathers through her life like a third-string reporter for the Oskaloosa Herald, paid to write a sex diary instead of a fishing column.
Much of Olds’s work has been devoted to sex, though hardly the full range of the Kama Sutra. Her last few books have become the chronicle of her aging body, as if the lines were tattooed upon her back:
the parea
clinging to my staggering thighs—and in rivulet snakes, down over the breasts,
my hair, which will dry to silver ripples,
Meanwhile, tottering on titanium femur-knobs, I’m
glistening, within and without.
[Oriana: I think that in this case “parea” means sexual companionship — if I’m correct, that’s a very obscure euphemism. But “para” also means birth, and perhaps that’s the more significant clue. Titanium is commonly used in joint replacement.]
Logan continues:
Olds is perhaps the first poet whose work will go from cradle to grave. The poems about her mother’s breasts might have been composed when Olds was in swaddling clothes; and I expect she’ll still be scribbling when the undertaker wheels up his three gallons of formaldehyde. Olds turned eighty last year, rarely a high-water mark in a poet’s career—if the poet doesn’t lie in the mortuary by then, the poetry usually does.
Even so, Olds continues to write on any subject that occurs to her (some, alas, occur over and over and over). In a poem set just before her father’s death, she says goodbye to the dead beasts he bore to the dining-room table: “Goodbye/ to carving the ham, the way the slice/ falls away in rosy suppleness,/ and carving the goose, ripping off the leg,/ reaching deep into the cavity to scoop out the stuffing.” Leave it to Olds to stage an elegy requiring knives. These memories, because there she can’t escape the shadow of her own mortality, are touching, her mannerisms suppressed, her Orphic auto-play obsession with the body ignored. Earlier she sings a long paean to liverwurst. She also has a poem some fifty lines long on Elizabeth Hardwick’s need of a hankie.
The most deeply moving elegy is for her childhood best friend, who died aged nine from lead poisoning (closed garage, mother frosting a Christmas tree with lead spray-paint). Death brings out the best in the poet, softening the hard edges of exposure. What’s left when the shallow form of exhibitionism falls away is an Olds more vulnerable. The poet’s great-grandfather, who raised pigs, can’t just die of swine flu, say; no, he hangs himself with a hog rope when, flat broke, he can’t face having an eighth child to support. She has an understandable obsession with the last days of her second husband, who suffered a prolonged death from cancer:
the fine, worn man almost hori-
zontal a couple of feet above
the layers of carpets, the home-hewn floor,
the cellar ceiling, yards above
the basement porch, another yard
above the complex dirt of the earth.
With her eye on others, she’s no longer as self-absorbed as a mollusc, though in some poems expiation seems more like vengeance. You can forgive all the poems on the decrepitude and lumpish collapse of her body, forgive poems that give the prosaic a bad name, forgive slipshod lines and contrived enjambments (“hori-” is meant to rhyme with “floor”), forgive poems where you know what you’ll get a mile before you get it.
In this tediously overlong book, Olds offers ten poems in Emily Dickinson’s style about visiting her house in Amherst. (For $300, as the poet fails to mention, you can now spend an hour alone in the bedroom where Dickinson wrote many of her poems.) This attempt at a style antithetical to Olds’s own is about the only comedy on offer. Consider “Let us Play — Yesterday —/ I a Girl — sent East —/ Pacific to Atlantic —/ Chicago — Betweenst” or “In the Dark Morning/ Not here to See/ Open — Acorns —/ Above the Wet Street.”
Trying to translate Dickinson for a second-grade reader could produce nothing worse. Olds can’t keep the four-three measure of common meter and treats the rhymes as if exact rhyme were optional. Emily broke form and toyed with rhyme, to be sure; but she was never embarrassing. Even more excruciating are the poems self-consciously socially conscious, especially those using that overused word “privilege” (“advantage” would be more neutral). She has nothing to add to the arguments over black lives, climate change, or the Gulf War.
The private brutality in Olds’s poetry lies concealed by her open manner, the confessions of the confessional. Half a century after this daughter of Lowell and Plath started dragging private trauma into poetry, trauma reigns supreme, however superficial, however intent on using poetry as a prophylactic purgative of the sorrows of the past. Many victims suffer the muck of despair and depression all their lives; but Olds’s revelations, except in the elegies, often remain an uncashed check. Despite all her agitated dramatics, the forensic accounts of her aging body, the twice- or thrice-regurgitated memories of beatings her mother gave her during the Truman administration, her work is often pedestrian, deliberate but dull, poetry for which the term obsessive-compulsive was invented. There’s Grand Guignol around every corner; but, when Olds opens the floodgates in Balladz, out pours not blood but gruel.
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2023/6/down-on-the-corner
Contrast this with the review by Kate Kellaway in The Guardian. If Logan finds Olds ossified, Kellaway finds her “evergreen.”
~ Sharon Olds recently turned 80 and, as one reads her latest collection, one wonders: over a long writing career, do you get to sound more, or less, like yourself? It is inspiring to be able to report that, in Balladz, she proves triumphantly evergreen: a woman who still steps across prudishly conventional lines as playfully as a child absorbed in French skipping. She writes about sex, love and the landscape of the body with zany intimacy. And there is something new here too: a freshly evolved conscience, a chafing sense of her own privilege (New Year’s Song ends: “For a moment the core of my life/ was not desire, but the knowledge of my unearned luck”) and an extended empathy (When I looked out ends: “In my 78th year, my eyes opened/ a little wider to the suffering of others”). Beyond this, she looks mindfully at the planet (in the arresting but bald Ballad Torn Apart).
These poems are a delicate reckoning. Beds and graves feature repeatedly but there is nothing supine about the writing. Her mother shows up a little too often and you might complain that this was the same Olds (we know enough about her mother’s cruelty). Yet perhaps there is no such thing as familiar territory when a mother persists in being a foreign figure in a person’s life. In Genesis, a powerful DIY bible of a poem, Olds releases herself with a valedictory lurch from an imagined scene in which her grandmother declares:
Amherst Balladz, a middle section of this collection, is riskily impressive, a homage to the poet Emily Dickinson whose home Olds visits in Amherst. It is written, in as far as is possible, in Dickinson’s style – although that “z” on Balladz stands as a groovily anachronistic disclaimer. Here’s a sample:
Since any – Beauty – I could have –
Would Not be of my Visage –
But drawn or Writ on Paper –
Stricter – Hieroglyph.
Inevitably, for all her skill, Olds cannot duplicate Dickinson’s boundless pain or mystery. She arrives instead at a warm moment of demystification, as she exclaims: “She was a person!” It is fascinating to see America’s most corporeal poet revering America’s most incorporeal.
Olds also includes poems written during the pandemic in which she lives up to her own claim (from Meditation during the Suffering and Deaths of Others): “I think I was born funny – born seeing funny.” There is an especially merry poem, Isolation Liverwurst, about the arrival by post of mayonnaise in lockdown that has her “capering and squeaking” with delight.
But it is the final section, Elegies, which is the most remarkable. She avoids any tiptoeing reverence or the starstruck sense in which death is seen almost as a form of promotion that frequently blights elegies of this kind. She mourns a schoolfriend simply, she searches for the grave of her poet/friend Galway Kinnell in the Vermont mountains and ends comically consoling herself with a pair of his odd socks.
But the most heart-stirring poems are about the death of her partner, Carl Wallman, a former cattle breeder. She is at pains not to underplay the reality of his illness. She describes his hospice bed (and climbing into it), looks at his coffin, at the grass and the earth – all present in poems of unshrinking beauty. And in When They Say You Have Maybe Three Months Left, she wonders:
Maybe life is a
kind of dying. Maybe this has been heaven.
WHEN THEY SAY YOU HAVE MAYBE THREE MONTHS LEFT
In my sleep, I dreamed that I came to your grave –
and what lay between us? The beautiful uncut
hair of the grass, and topsoil like the rich
dirt in which you buried our sheets
after I left you – our DNA – near where
you later buried your golden dog.
Also between us the new ceiling
of plain pine, and the linen garment
your fresh-washed unbreathing body had been clothed in,
and the earthen chamber music of wild,
underworld, spiral creatures,
and your tissue I have loved, and within it the ancient
primordial man of your skeleton.
Narwhal tusk, elephant ivory,
icon of your narrow-hipped male power
I rode, rowing in eden. But
it was no dream, I lay broad waking,
and you have not died yet. I can read this to you
in a week, in front of the woodstove,
the flames curving up to points and disappearing,
or beside the pond, the water rippling,
ovals of hemlock and beech changing places in it.
Sometimes you fall asleep as I’m talking to you.
And you’ve said: I want you to be reading me a poem when I die.
And, Let’s not stop writing to each other when I’m dead.
And when I’m dead too! I said. When we met,
though we fell in love immediate and permanent,
we could not make a two-soul union,
nor when I left – each of us had to
work, on ourselves, for years, to get there.
And now we are there! Maybe this has been
death all along! Maybe life is a
kind of dying. Maybe this has been heaven.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/jan/17/balladz-by-sharon-olds-review-insights-and-elegies
Oriana:
What a difference a loving approach makes, and I mean both the love contained in the poem, and a more accepting, affectionate attitude on the part of the reader.
However, I did note the borrowing from Whitman and Dickinson, and thought, inevitably perhaps, of the greater poetic power of those two geniuses. Still, Olds gives us the vivid symbolic details she’s famous for (“the flames curving up to points and disappearing”), and an occasional line that goes straight to the heart: “Sometimes you fall asleep as I’m talking to you.
And you’ve said: I want you to be reading me a poem when I die.”
The repetition of “maybe” in the last two lines adds a certain timid tenderness besides being there for the rhythm. Still, past a certain age we know all too well that life is a kind of dying, and that this daily life is our only real heaven. 
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Still, William Logan isn’t pure vitriol (some would say sour-grapes envy — after all, he’s known for his sarcastic reviews rather than his own poems). Nevertheless, he can recognize quality when it’s undeniable, as his review of Ada Limón’s latest book shows (even though he can’t seem to completely stay away from just a little malice).
~A poet can do very little about voice. Tone, vocabulary, and pacing may be altered after a struggle; but poets must bear with what time and circumstance, even taste, have saddled them. Part of Elizabeth Bishop’s charm is that she speaks like a woman you already know. Marianne Moore rattles on about the world like a librarian or biology teacher. Between Williams’s folksiness; Pound’s burly brusqueness and bluster; and Eliot’s pince-nez, high-church manner (or his earlier knockabout humor, eager squalidness, and low-church growl), there was little such poets could do about their voices but succumb. Voice is the helpless expression of personality. Young poets worry about “finding” their voice, but usually the voice is already holding them for ransom.
Ada Limón, appointed poet laureate last year, comes to her poems casually, as if they’d just occurred to her. (It must take more than a little labor to make them sound that way.) Many in The Hurting Kind are prosy and more are sheer prose, as poems often are these days; but Limón’s gently confiding delivery goes a long way toward making lines ease into the subconscious, where poems work best.
I thought it was the neighbor’s cat, back
to clean the clock of the fledgling robins low
in their nest stuck in the dense hedge by the house,
but what came was much stranger, a liquidity
moving, all muscle and bristle: a groundhog
slippery and waddle-thieving my tomatoes, still
green in the morning’s shade.
The poet expresses her amusement at what Darwin called the “entangled bank” in the striking language she has made her own: “Clean the clock of the fledgling robins”? “A groundhog/ . . . waddle-thieving my tomatoes”? Soon after, she gets to the suffering, where she doesn’t linger. Her lines end the way they would in a newspaper column, hanging onto a word that by right belongs to the following phrase. She rarely summons the ambiguity and surprise of that foundation text for enjambment, Paradise Lost. Instead, she settles for chopped prose.
Limón often starts a poem in medias res and ends there, too. It’s a tactic that becomes a strategy, but not one that suffers from the repetition, as dropping in on strangers does, at least for the strangers. Poetry keeps these snippets of life from sounding like outtakes from The New York Times’s “Metropolitan Diary,” which New Yorkers read to remind themselves of their fondest delusion, that New York is just a village; and which villagers read in disappointment that New York is no better than one.
If the poems are often scatty in organization, her voice makes them conversation intensified, the way we hoover up the world in scraps and make structure of it. Though her endings can be casual, they sound like the idea of order. One poem starts, as her best often do, with something that seems just to have occurred to her:
Past the strip malls and the power plants,
out of the holler, past Gun Bottom Road
and Brassfield and before Red Lick Creek,
there’s a stream called Drowning Creek where
I saw the prettiest bird I’d seen all year.
She can’t wait to tell you, so she tells you. (I know, I know, a poet’s casualness is a gesture, and gestures are willy-nilly tactics in disguise; but Limón sells them better than any Fuller Brush salesman or Avon Lady.) The place-names, as commonly in the South, are their own poem. Limón does not prove immune to endings made for endings—the poem closes, “There is a solitude in this world/ I cannot pierce. I would die for it.”
Her ability over and over to catch the reader off-guard makes her worth close attention. She refers to the “need . . ./ to go on living,” and elsewhere, shyly, slyly, to other things held back. The book warms on second look, where the silences fill with meaning. A lovely poem about her stepfather’s unexpected kindness makes the case for the triumph of the unspoken. Everywhere there’s evidence of the poet’s delight in language, from “The wild pansy shoves its persistent face beneath/ the hackberry’s shade” to “I’d sit cross-legged/ in the civil twilight’s crawl// and wait for the pallid bats” to “the world walking in, ready to be ravaged, open for business.”
Limón is a naturalist in love with the naturalist’s world, and countless poems here make plants and animals (minerals, not so much) beings nearly conscious. She’s a noticer, as Moore and Bishop were; when she writes, “Bottlebrush trees attract/ the nectar lovers, and we/ capture, capture, capture,” that last line is a cunning reference to Bishop’s famous triplet in “The Fish.” If she can’t yet do what Frost did in “The Exposed Nest” and “Neither Out Far Nor In Deep,” well, who could?
At times I wish Limón would go more frequently beyond observation, wish that she had dropped a dozen or more poems that don’t do very much with very much—too many plants stay just plants. There are later poems too dry and flat, mere notations of an hour or a day, taking her pulse without revealing a thing. Still, I’ll wander blithely through such lines only to be brought up short by an ending like “I thought suffering kept things interesting. How funny/ that I called it love and the whole time it was pain.” If The Hurting Kind doesn’t reach the depths or breadth of her previous book, The Carrying (2018), it’s like hating the hawk for not being a condor. ~
https://newcriterion.com/issues/2023/6/down-on-the-corner
Mary:
William Logan is so stingy with praise, even the backhanded kind, it makes me wonder where he's been stung. His review of Olds is one long complaint, he finds her obsessive, self-absorbed, she "blathers through her life like a third string reporter," and has produced a "tediously long book," He generously lists all the things you might be able to forgive her for...but it's pretty clear he's not ready to forgive. The tone of the whole makes me wonder not about Olds' adequacy but his own.
Kellaway's approach is much kinder, without his mean vitriol, and seems like a better introduction to the book simply because it is not so heavily judgmental and dismissive. Even in his much less negative review of Limon, Logan still accuses her of "settling for chopped prose." She deserves our attention, at least, even if her work can be called prosy conversation.
This is my first encounter with Logan, and I am tempted to think he is like those male poets and critics who bemoaned the legitimacy of Plath and Sexton, among others, dragging all their woman-trauma into poetry...and degrading it. A sort of "look at these damn women and their mess...coming in and bleeding all over everything!! Taking up space we could put to better use. Who wants to hear this crap anyway?" I can't imagine Galway Kinnell, Olds friend, a truly wonderful poet and generous teacher, ever being so threatened by and dismissive of these women poets.
Oriana:
I’ve met both Kinnell and Logan many years ago at Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference, and was impressed with both of them. And yes, Kinnell was a champion of Olds, who certainly appreciated it.
Logan strikes me as downright malicious. Worse, he tries to be a virtuoso of reviewing malice, trying to find just the right devastating put-down. His review of Olds was actually surprisingly mild. But given how much praise Olds deserves both for her poetic skills and for having opened up some taboo subjects, his acidulous fault-finding at least borders on malice. But ultimately, he’s a zero, while Sharon Olds and Ada Limon are both outstanding poets. In addition, Olds was a role model for younger women poets -- because of her honesty and authenticity. She can't be praised enough for her pioneering courage at the time she published her first books. Just the fact that she wrote about her children was not to the liking of various male poets.
Kinnell also wrote several poems about his children, and that was cited in his favor. “You can’t dislike a guy who writes about his children,” one critic wrote. I forget the critic’s name, but the statement stayed deep in my memory.
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PUTIN APPEARED PARALYZED AND UNABLE TO ACT DURING THE FIRST HOURS OF THE REBELLION (Washington Post)
~ The lack of direction from the Kremlin during the crisis has left Putin significantly weakened, according to his critics. “Putin showed himself to be a person who is not able to make serious, important and quick decisions in critical situations. He just hid,” said Gennady Gudkov, a former colonel in the Russian security services who is now an opposition politician in exile.
“This was not understood by most of the Russian population. But it was very well understood by Putin’s elite. He is no longer the guarantor of their security and the preservation of the system.”
“Russia is a country of mafia rules. And Putin made an unforgivable mistake,” said a senior Moscow financier with ties to the Russian intelligence services. “He lost his reputation as the toughest man in town.” ~
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/25/putin-prigozhin-rebellion-kremlin-disarray/?fbclid=IwAR0K9GZNokolmfUAvcxq9RGKmpUzPiZDoFO1Gi6yUxtZPEZjFp5UwYCXrnM
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Russians are modern-day barbarians at the gates of civilization. ~ Misha Firer
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. . . for the first time since the dawn of the modern era, a former superpower of a rogue nation, the Nazi state of our time, unspeakably ugly in its deathbed agony as an erstwhile empire, armed to the teeth with nuclear weapons and ruled by the worst and most soullessly evil kind of human mutants history has ever known, is openly and with endless recklessness threatening the world with total nuclear annihilation. ~ Misha Iossel
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RUSSIA’S REAL RELIGION (repost)
~ Russians are a religious people. They are no cynics!
Russians’ true religion is not Orthodox Christianity, which has been for too long an extension of the reactionary state to inspire a sense of wonder. Their secular religion is to dwell on mythological past concocted in the Kremlin-sponsored think tanks who have recycled Soviet playbook and broadcast on state-controlled television round the clock and drummed into children’s heads at state schools.
Russia is the greatest country.
Russians are the greatest people, superior to the rest.
Russian Army are always victorious and can beat and destroy America (never mind that economically and militarily America is at least two generations ahead).
All those tenets are matters of faith, therefore no amount of arguments and facts can change people’s hearts and minds. Except to start showing a different message on TV.
On the surface, Putin is a typical Soviet loser.
A man small in stature due to malnutrition, with an array of complexes. A domestic tyrant who compensates for his failures and humiliations he’s been subjected to, who was beaten by his dad as a child, and wants to lash out in revenge on the world. Tens of millions of Russians discovered that they’re just like him. And those who weren’t and chose to be vocal about it, found themselves in deep water.
If you dig deeper, you realize that almost the entire nation has fallen hard under his spell like Pied Piper and his rats seduced by Putin’s cloying words.
It’s like the whole nation have become somnambulists who surrendered to the sweetness of make believe worlds he has drawn in their minds with his long speeches. And they want to fight it but they can’t — the drug has taken hold of them.
If for World War One, volunteers were requested to defend their brothers and sisters in Orthodox Christian faith in Serbia, for World War Three, Russians have been asked to go kill their brothers and sisters in order to “liberate” them from an alien religion they have become possessed with.
What do Russian soldiers really die and get wounded for?
For the indefinite extension of sanctions, for the poverty of their families, for more misery, hatred of the civilized world, hatred of Ukrainians, then eventually Civil War, and disintegration of their state.
This doesn’t sell well, not due to ingrained stupidity of the enterprise but because of the weakness of spirit and the smallness of hearts. Putin succeeded in creating millions of cowards by getting rid of every potential leader who could have inspired Russians to grow a pair and open up their hearts.
An abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union caught everyone by surprise in the West, and there was no preparation or thought-through roadmap of what to do with the largest socialist republic inhabited with the entitled titular nation of the former empire.
Eventually, Russian Federation became a US-vetted neo-con project — an oligarchy masquerading as democracy whose sole reason for existence as a state was to sell natural resources to the West and keep their hands off the nukes.
Putin broke that deal with the West after his repeated threats of nuclear strikes, through invasion of Ukraine, and by turning the gas taps off and leaving Europe without gas before winter.
The new deal for Russia will probably mean dismantling of the federation and forming another political entity or a number of entities.
One thing is certain though — after watching how the populace have fallen under the spell of a dictator with inferiority complex who has systematically bribed European politicians to keep them complacent of his reign, the West will think twice to leave Russia stewing in its own juices once again. ~ Misha Firer, Quora
Oriana:
I have been searching for an answer about Putin’s motives in invading Ukraine — for which he has neither the manpower (currently, convicts are being offered freedom and money if they join the army; men well past middle-age are recruited) nor the kind of economy that could sustain prolonged war and occupation. I’ve discovered two motives that make some sense to me.
First, there is empire building. For Russia, no amount of land has ever been enough. The Russian imperial dream has been “from the Atlantic to the Pacific.” They already have the Pacific, but the idea of rolling through to the Atlantic seems doomed, seeing how Putin’s incompetent army can’t even roll through Ukraine.
Second, there is the question of pride, or the collective national ego.
Putin wants to show the world that “America is not the boss.” America has plenty of problems of its own, and it doesn’t feel the need to be flexing its military muscle to show the world “who is the boss.” Other concerns are more pressing at this time.
Both reasons could be summarized as “ambition.” More specifically, it’s Putin’s personal ambition. Now, Napoleon was also ambitious, but at least he was a brilliant military commander. Still, he made the mistake of invading Russia (and Hitler, undeterred, went to to repeat the mistake). And Putin, being rather puny compared with his ambitious predecessors, will be remembered as the inept dictator who fought a tragic, idiotic war to annex Ukraine, and wrecked the Russian Federation.
(As for the image of the little boy: I think it's child abuse.)
Putin and Prince Charles, St. Petersburg, 1994. I find Putin’s shabby, oversize clothes strangely symbolic.
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Joseph Milosch (Repost):
Is there a connection between early Christian support for Emperor Constantine and the support of dictators by Christians today? I wonder about this while reading this statement: "In Russia the true religion is not Orthodox Christianity; it is the extension of the reactionary state to inspire a sense of wonder. Their secular religion is to dwell on a mythical past concocted by Kremlin-sponsored think tanks."
Since the start of Putin’s War, every article about Russia reminds me of the Conservative Christians in the United States. In the 1990s, the C street Republicans, a group of conservative Christian lawmakers, resided in Washington, DC. Calling themselves The Family, they favorably compared Stalin and Putin to Christ and admired these leaders for creating a plutocracy and kleptocracy controlled by a white oligarchic elite.
During the Clinton administration, the conservative think tanks started to evolve an American myth that John Wayne and Clint Eastwood’s movies promoted. Whereas Russian mythos exalts a mythical empire, the American myth glorifies the gun culture of the Wild West. It describes a legendary landscape where the hero, a white man, dictated social justice and established the American way through the barrel of his gun.
The western gun culture evolved from the gun culture of the Plantations. In this story, white men upheld honor and justice with firearms. The clans settled their feuds with rifles and pistols, and women depended on armed men to protect them. The good Native Americans and the enslaved Africans admired the white man’s intelligence and power. In one of their movies, Disney portrayed slavery as a black man singing zippy-do-dah.
In America, Fox News and QAnon Conspiracies promote the Myth of America developed by the Republican think tanks. Is the United States headed for a country where hatred for civilization is a staple of citizenship, the majority live in poverty, and mass shootings are as common as McDonald’s? In the last twenty years, I have never heard a Republican referred to as a person with great purity of character.
Nor have I heard of a world leader referring to more than one or two Republicans as a person of high moral and physical courage.
International reporters and their government refer to Republicans as fanatics and extremists. These are the terms used to define Putin today. The descriptions are the same ones describing Germany in 1939 when the country was spiraling out of control, and the German Christians supported Hitler.
Oriana:
I can certainly see the similarity between Putin’s worship of the mythical greatness of Russia and the right-wing worship of “traditional values” — a term used by Putin as well, publicly praising the “traditional family” while privately making his former gay lovers rich. Handsome gay men like Medvedev can enjoy positions of both wealth and power, while the average Russian helplessly swallows the imperial propaganda that distracts him from finding out about the oligarchs' real estate and other investments in the West, and and of course those notorious mega-yachts.
Extremism and corruption seem to foretell a country's ignoble downfall. Well, Russia fell in 1917, then in 1991. This time they don’t have a charismatic ideology (extreme nationalism is necessarily provincial, constrained by the borders) — just layers and layers of lies, looting, bribes, and corruption of every sort. And murder — there are so many convenient windows . . .
The brave few who dare to take to the streets to protest are the ones who save the honor of the nation, no matter the price to themselves. But it won’t do to blame the ordinary Russians for passivity and not marching in the streets. Heroes who can defy a dictator devoid of a moral compass are few at best.
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PUTIN’S FEAR OF STRONG GENERALS
~ After the humiliating collapse of Soviet superpowerdom, marked by withdrawal from Eastern European vassal-states and the loss of 14 former Russian imperial territories reconstituted as Soviet republics, Putin doubled down on the necessity of military success: His regime commandeers the prestige of Soviet victory in 1945, conjuring himself as the actual supreme commander. His minor victories in Chechnya, Georgia, and Syria seemed to confirm that he had the gift. But his vision of himself as supremo has set himself an impossibly high threshold—and the price of defeat and stalemate in his Ukrainian war of choice have made regime security as important as military victory—or more so.
In 1698, when he was in London on his Grand Embassy mission, Peter the Great faced a mutiny by the Kremlin musketeers that he crushed brutally, breaking up that obsolete force and creating his own regiments of new-model guards that remained the Romanov dynasty’s praetorians until the end of the regime. Yet the guards, like their Roman equivalents, regularly backed their own candidates for tsar, as they did on his death in 1725 with his widow Catherine I. Later they overthrew tsars, most famously in the coups of 1741, 1762, and 1801.
Peter the Great after beheading one of the Streltsy rebels
In 1825, elite officers launched the Decembrist rebellion against autocracy itself, only to be crushed by Nicholas I, who created the organs of secret police in part to investigate and prevent military revolts. In February 1917, while a spontaneous uprising seized the streets in Petrograd, it was the generals who forced Nicholas II to abdicate. Later that year, his successor, Kerensky, was almost destroyed by his commander Gen. Lavr Kornilov.
Russia’s modern rulers inherited that distrust of military esprit and Bonapartist ambition in their generals, whom they feared might build a Napoleonic-style military regime with popular support—using political commissars and special military sections of their new security organs, the Cheka, NKVD, KGB, and today’s FSB—to terrorize and surveil military officers.
As early as 1930, Stalin was mulling a blood purge of top military officers that he enacted in 1937 when he executed more than 40,000 officers and three of the five marshals, including two of the most brilliant, Mikhail Tukhachevsky and Vasily Blyukher, who were tortured and murdered savagely. Instead he promoted inept cronies from his civil war days, led by Marshals Kliment Voroshilov and Grigory Kulik.
Only later in the war did Stalin sack these bunglers and promote a brilliant team led by Georgy Zhukov, but he never fully relaxed his military terror: He allowed his secret police minister, Lavrentiy Beria, to investigate and arrest generals while building up a separate phalanx of special NKVD military forces—his own praetorians. Some of his generals, most famously Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky, literally came from prison to Stalin’s headquarters when the war required talented officers—and had to sit in the dictator’s office with Beria, who had personally tortured him.
Stalin and Zhukov
After the war, Stalin demoted Zhukov to command the Odesa and the Urals military districts while deliberately promoting political hacks to military rank. (Beria and Nikolai Bulganin were marshals.) After his victory at Stalingrad, Stalin himself never appeared in public out of his marshal’s uniform. On Stalin’s death, Zhukov turned the tables on the secret police when he backed Nikita Khrushchev’s arrest—and later, execution—of Beria.
In 1957, he again backed Khrushchev against Stalin’s grandees Vyacheslav Molotov and Lazar Kaganovich. But Khrushchev also feared Zhukov, sacking him and accusing him of Bonapartism. Later, Khrushchev tried to arrange his own promotion to marshal of the Soviet Union—and when his equally unmartial successor, Leonid Brezhnev, secured his own promotion to that rank, he danced to celebrate it.
During the 1990s, President Boris Yeltsin, whose prestige was ruined when the great Russian army was defeated by ragtag Chechens in the streets of Grozny, was forced temporarily to turn to an overmighty paratrooper, Gen. Alexander Lebed, who had run against him in the 1996 election. Lebed, too, was accused of Bonapartism and sacked.
Zhukov and Lebed are the examples who would be on Putin’s mind in the more than 500 days of the Ukraine war. To avoid potential rivals, Putin promoted Shoigu and Gerasimov, his own version of Stalin’s inept cronies.
Every Russian ruler must exist in a perpetual state of ferocious vigilance, paying paramount attention to personal security. Stalin constantly purged and shuffled his security grandees, always keeping his personal security under his own control. His successors, even Yeltsin, did the same: Yeltsin’s devoted bodyguard, Alexander Korzhakov, was promoted to general and top aide until he overreached. Putin has studied these lessons, recalling how Fidel Castro, the long-serving Cuban dictator, told him how he had survived many assassination attempts by always keeping personal control of his security.
Putin has promoted his former bodyguard Viktor Zolotov to command the huge National Guard (Rosgvardiya) that is his shield against military threats. Yet at the same time, the failure to take Kyiv or Odesa and hold Kherson has revealed the cloddish incompetence of his chosen military leaders.
Putin’s entire system, not unlike that of the tsars and general-secretaries before him, resembles a court in which magnates are rewarded and promoted, then played against one another. The ruler is the supreme adjudicator. Even though Russian despots seek and reward loyalty above all other qualities, they still value and promote competence too.
Every Russian ruler has to deal with the knowledge that their bureaucrats are often cautious, corrupt, and incapable of initiative. To get things done, rulers turn to dynamic favorites, former outsiders who become intimate insiders empowered to exert pressure on vested elites. That is where Prigozhin came in.
Favorites tend to reflect the rulers they serve: Peter’s Prince Alexander Menshikov was as brutal and dynamic as his master; Catherine’s Potemkin the same combination of enlightenment, empire, and vision as she. Alexander I, disenchanted by the liberal dreams of his youth, promoted a glowering brutal disciplinarian in Gen. Alexei Arakcheev as his effective deputy, who loved to declare: “I am the friend of the tsar, and complaints about me can be made only to God.” Nicholas II’s Grigori Rasputin mirrored the weakness and mysticism of his tsar.
Prigozhin reflects Putin’s nature, too—but he was, for all his criminal record, his rise in catering, and his brutal nature, a doer: When Putin wanted to create troll farms to undermine Western democracies, Prigozhin did it; when he wanted a deniable, cheaper military force, Prigozhin created the Wagner Group that helped achieve victory in Syria and push Russian interests in Africa.
When Putin made the dire decision to attack Ukraine, Prigozhin enthusiastically embraced the war, and shaming the venal bureaucrats and military pencil pushers Shoigu and Gerasimov, he shaped Wagner as a Russian storm force. Putin’s promotion of an independent unit and its warlord was itself a sign of state weakness—and lack of confidence in his own military.
The failure to promote an effective general to fight the Ukraine war is one of Putin’s most egregious lapses. Indeed, one of the chief duties of the war leader is to select generals who can win victories and remove those who can’t. Even Stalin, after many defeats, backed Zhukov and other talented generals. Putin has either never found that talented general, or more likely, so fears the threat of one that he has preferred stalemate to the peril of a victory won by someone else.
Gen. Sergey Surovikin, for example, was promoted to commander in Ukraine, then removed.
Fearing that a successful rival general could provide an alternative potentate around whom his courtiers could rally, Putin instead empowered Prigozhin to promote himself and attack the military hierarchy as slothful and crooked while he emulated Stalin’s penal battalions of World War II by recruiting criminals from Russian prisons; Prigozhin flaunted his devotion to the motherland, having deserters executed with his trademark sledgehammer. Tempered and bloodied by the cruel battles at Bakhmut and elsewhere, and possibly liberated by his own struggle with cancer, Prigozhin started to believe himself a Russian paladin hamstrung by deskbound cowards and a sclerotic autocrats.
Prigozhin was serving in a classic role as a way to intimidate the military command, but unlike Stalin’s Beria, this ferocious, loudmouthed military amateur was also winning admiration from some generals, possibly including Surovikin.
But ultimately, it was unlikely that Putin would choose an amateur condottiero and his small force of Wagnerians over the huge Russian army. In the end, he was always going to back the army. And he did so, allowing his officials to cut off Wagner’s ammunition and its budget. But Putin failed to perform his essential role of balancing his magnates, apparently refusing to talk to Prigozhin—who turned to desperate measures.
Putin now finds himself the prisoner of the conundrum of despot as supreme commander and security sentinel. His dream of imperial greatness has become a fatal trap. His weakness now means that any retreat from command could lead to a hemorrhage of power.
Every autocrat competes with gilded and titanic ghosts of imperators past. In 1945, when U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman congratulated Stalin on taking Berlin, the dictator replied, “Yes, but Alexander took Paris.” Putin could not hold Kherson.
Few autocrats can be Peter or Stalin, but Putin dreams of such victories. His dilemma—a tsar’s inability to balance his roles as military commander and political survivor—is also Ukraine’s tragedy. When dictators aspire to empire, many innocents bleed; when they fail, they take whole innocent peoples down with them. ~
https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/07/19/putin-wagner-prigozhin-russia-history-mercenaries-fear-strong-generals/?utm_source=pocket-newtab
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RUSSIAN PATRIOTISM (Dima Vorobiev)
If we look back at Russian history, we’ll see an interesting thing.
Case 1. Russo-Japanese War
Russian-Japanese war of 1904-’05 happens. The start of the war is marked by a patriotic surge across the entire political spectrum (except fringe revolutionaries). Students of the St. Petersburg university rally toward the Czar’s residence in the Winter Palace, singing “God Save the King”.
Outcome: the war is lost in the most humiliating of fashions.
Case 2. Russia ww1
WWI starts. An even greater patriotic wave across the Empire. Lenin and a few other revolutionaries are totally isolated in their opposition to the war.
Outcome: a few years later, the Empire is in smoking ruins, and the Czar is murdered along with his entire family.
Case 3. Russia ww2 starts
WWII. Hitler clashes with Stalin on June 22, 1941. No patriotic demonstrations either in Moscow, or other places. No flag waving, the mood is somber. Moreover, within a few months, up to three million Soviet soldiers prefer to surrender to Germans rather than fight them.
Outcome: four years later, Germany is defeated, and the Soviet Union becomes the world superpower.
The same pattern can be seen in the political history, too.
August 1991: the anti-Gorbachev putsch is defeated, people in Moscow party in the streets.
Communists are gone, everyone is excited.
Outcome: in a matter of few years, Russia acquires a bombarded parliament, rigged presidential elections, and a national bankruptcy.
December 1999: Yeltsin puts a little-known man called Putin (“Putin who?”) on the throne. Everyone is tired from the chaos of the 1990s. The nation sighs and shrugs off the news: the transfer of power is totally eclipsed by the Y2K scare and the New Year celebration that is kind of a national day in every Russian’s calendar.
Outcome: 15 years later, the country is bulging with oil money, Russia pokes the US and NATO in the eye whenever it wants, the Russian president triumphantly annexes a part of another country’s territory, and no one in the world can do anything about it.
You see why I have a very bad feeling about patriotic flag-waving in Russia if a war breaks out? ~ Dima Vorobiev, Quora
Rich Schall:
Don't forget that Russia would have been over run by the Nazis if the Nazis hadn't been so militarily stupid. They were fighting a war on three fronts, had no plan to resupply those fronts, and there was always the Russian winter. I'm very glad they were that stupid.
JS Squidley:
Patriotism and ‘Flag-Waving’ though can be exhibited in many different ways. Where some would see the current general attitude as nonchalant there is an opposing view. Russians just do not exude patriotism in the same way. This doesn't make Russia humble. Russia does have its own version of machismo. And for those on the inside its quite similar to being nose-deaf to a smelly teenage bedroom.
I had a Russian immigrant US Military Linguist as an Interpreter while I was in Kyrgyzstan. I spent a lot of time with him. He had a Russian saying for everything and I do mean everything. Me: “I think I am getting a cold” Him: “In Russia you do not catch cold, cold catches you”
He was very proud of his Russian roots. Just as proud as the Irish, the Mexicans or any other. Here you have an American Citizen who moved to the US when he was 15, in the US Military and he still held a fairly decent allegiance to Russia. He had a shit life when he was kid but he still revels in it in his own way like a badge of courage.
The Privateer Company’s of marauder type soldiers on the border with Ukraine are a great example of nonchalant extremist nationalists. It is rather similar to what fascist groups were doing on the German-Polish borders in 1939, all of it part of Case White.
Another sign of patriotic fervor can be seen in the general acceptance of state propaganda put forth by state run media. One only has to watch RT for about 30 minutes to see the nonsense that is piped over the air. Russians aren't stupid but they buy it. They buy it because they want to be proud. They want to revel in superiority, self-inflated and hollow or not.
Jack Halewood:
As best I can tell, the Russian idea of patriotism is vastly different to what I myself would call patriotism. Many Russians I've spoken to have a very low opinion of the country (“the roads are shit, but that's Russia", “the lift's broken again, but that's Russia"), and — here's the key — don't do anything about it and don't expect it to change any time soon.
They simply don't see Russia as a (potentially, at the minute it's not one) “first-world" country (and, yes, I know the history of the term, and am using it to mean “highly-developed"). The fact that Russia's level of development is closer to Iraq than Norway is met with a kind of “well, duh" response. They simply haven't lived comfortably for long enough so as to judge themselves not against where they were in the 90s, but against, say, Norway, which is obviously what they need to do in order to get close to that standard of living.
Which is not to say they aren't “proud" of their country, of the hardships it's faced and recovered from, of Pushkin and Tolstoy, etc.
Let's say your mother is a murderer. Or did something terrible. She isn't, by any objective measure, a “good person". But she's your mother, and such love is unconditional. It's something like that.
And, yes, a lot of it comes from upbringing. If a student says they're a patriot, and I ask why, more often than not they're all but dumbfounded by such a question. But it's my homeland. Etc. And if I ask them would they have preferred to have born in another country, their answer is a very hesitant one, and often affirmative. Conversely, I can honestly say I wouldn't have rather grew up anywhere else, I love Liverpool. But I'd never never never in a million years describe myself as a “patriot" without a good deal of qualification. Our attitudes towards it, as towards many things, are just so thoroughly different.
Mary:
I am more than a bit worried that Putin, in painting himself into a corner, may just lash out in frustration with what I'm sure he considers his only ace, his nukes. After all, what's the point of a world without Russia?? Better no world at all.
Oriana:
What humiliates Putin and his fans is that Russia is not regarded as a super-power, the way that the Soviet Union was. He apparently still has the Soviet mentality that Russia can’t just be another normal country — it has to be an empire feared by the rest of the world.
Our best hope lies in the abundant evidence that he’s the opposite of suicidal. He is in fact paranoid that people are trying to kill him, and he has his bunkers and his doubles and his armored train. By now he’s threatened the use of nuclear weapons so often that he’s lost all credibility.
And the Prigozhin adventure showed Putin’s weakness — sooner or later, he’ll be either deposed or thrown out a window. The Russian power mafia is already disappointed with him. 
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OLD-AGE PENSIONS IN RUSSIA
~ In 2023, for the first time in recent history, no one will retire by age in Russia.
This will definitely help the Russian government to save some coin that they used to bribe pensioners in 2022, the year when Putin raised the size of pensions by age twice, lifting the average monthly pension from 16,790 rubles (2021) to 18,084 rubles (2022) — a rise by 7.7% within a year.
(Too bad the rises couldn’t keep up with the skyrocketing prices for food and goods, but that’s another story.)
Average monthly pension by age in Russia:
2021: RUB 16,790 (USD 237)
2022: RUB 18,084 (USD 255)
Why did Putin do it?
Because he needed pensioners’ support for his special military operation (aka 2022 Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine) and usually he got it by bribing his core electorate – people who work for the government and the ones who rely on the state for their existence, like pensioners.
1/3 of Russians live on money directly paid by the government: state employees, elected officials, pensioners, industries run on the state budget money (education, healthcare, emergency services, enforcers).
SPB pensioners
The fact that no new pensioners will burden the government this year must be a huge relief for the state Pension Fund of the Russian Federation.
This is due to the schedule of the 2018 Pension Reform.
In 2022, women who were born in the second half of 1965 and reached 56.5 years old, as well as men born in the second half of 1960 and reached 61.5 years old, retired.
At the same time, the next inflow of new pensioners is scheduled only for 2024 - these will be women born in 1966 and men born in 1961.
The 2018 pension reform provided for a gradual increase in the retirement age.
Before that, Russian women were retiring at 55 and men at 60; from 2028 the age will be 60 for women and 65 for men.
Initially Putin intended to raise women’s retirement age to 65 as well, but he had to backtrack because of huge unpopularity of the measure, and keep the 5-year difference by gender. The backtracking allowed to soften the huge street protests against the reform.
Pension age protests 2018
During 2019–2028, a transitional period had been scheduled to provide for those who at the beginning of the reform were on the threshold of retirement age.
The first wave of citizens retired 6 months later, and the second — 1.5 years later. This is followed by a 3-year delay, i.e., the next new pensioners will retire only in 2024.
Given the fact that Putin promised that the pension age would never be increased for as long as he’s a president (another broken promise by Putin), his citizens could have some questions.
Maybe one day they will ask them. ~ Elena Gold, Quora
Kiko:
Thats like 200 and something euros, what's the average prices there for food and stuff?
Elena Gold:
Prices for food in Russia are similar to those in Europe, except that bread and milk are cheaper. Consumer goods are more expensive in Russia. A Chinese car sold in Russia under a Russian brand costs 3 times more.
Ilona Chase:
Well, age 55 and 60 are still lower than in European countries and the US. The UK raised the retirement age to 66 years for both men and women, and will be raising it to 68 for those born after 1978. The U.S. retirement age is 67 as of now. So Russians have it rather good. The question is more of how much money do they get in their pension. This tends to be pathetic in any country.
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‘NO ONE KNOWS HOW TO DIE LIKE US” — RUSSIA’S CYCLES OF SELF-DESTRUCTION AND DESTRUCTION OF OTHERS
~ Few have captured the Russian cycle of self-destruction and the destruction of others as well as the Ukrainian literary critic Tetyana Ogarkova. In her rewording of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Russian classic novel Crime and Punishment, a novel about a murderer who kills simply because he can, Ogarkova calls Russia a culture where you have “crime without punishment, and punishment without crime”. The powerful murder with impunity; the victims are punished for no reason.
When not bringing humanitarian aid to the front lines, Ogarkova presents a podcast together with her husband, the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko. It’s remarkable for showing two people thinking calmly while under daily bombardment. It reminds me of German-Jewish philosophers such as Walter Benjamin, who kept writing lucidly even as they fled the Nazis. As they try to make sense of the evil bearing down on their country, Ogarkova and Yermolenko note the difference between Hitler and Stalin: while Nazis had some rules about who they punished (non-Aryans; communists) in Stalin’s terror anyone could be a victim at any moment.
Random violence runs through Russian history. Reacting to how Vladimir Putin’s Russia is constantly changing its reasons for invading Ukraine – from “denazification” to “reclaiming historic lands” to “Nato expansion” – Ogarkova and Yermolenko decide that the very brutal nature of the invasion is its essence: the war crimes are the point. Russia claims to be a powerful “pole” in the world to balance the west – but has failed to create a successful political model others would want to join. So it has nothing left to offer except to drag everyone down to its own depths.“How dare you live so well,” went a resentful piece of graffiti by Russian soldiers in Bucha. “What’s the point of the world when there is no place for Russia in it,” complains Putin.
After the dam at Kakhovka was destroyed, a General Dobruzhinsky crowed on a popular Russian talkshow: “We should blow up the Kyiv water reservoir too.” “Why?” asked the host. “Just to show them.” But, as Ogarkova and Yermolenko explore, Russians also send their soldiers to die senselessly in the meat grinder of the Donbas, their bodies left uncollected on the battlefield, their relatives not informed of their death so as to avoid paying them. On TV, presenters praise how “no one knows how to die like us”. Meanwhile, villagers on the Russian-occupied side of the river are being abandoned by the authorities. Being “liberated” by Russia means joining its empire of humiliation.
Where does this drive to annihilation come from? In 1912 the Russian-Jewish psychoanalyst Sabina Spielrein – who was murdered by the Nazis, while her three brothers were killed in Stalin’s terror -- first put forward the idea that people were drawn to death as much as to life. She drew on themes from Russian literature and folklore for her theory of a death drive, but the founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, first found her ideas too morbid.
After the First World War, he came to agree with her. The desire for death was the desire to let go of responsibility, the burden of individuality, choice, freedom – and sink back into inorganic matter. To just give up. In a culture such as Russia’s, where avoiding facing up to the dark past with all its complex webs of guilt and responsibility is commonplace, such oblivion can be especially seductive.
But Russia is also sending out a similar message to Ukrainians and their allies with these acts of ultra-violent biblical destruction: give in to our immensity, surrender your struggle. And for all Russia’s military defeats and actual socio-economic fragility, this propaganda of the deed can still work.
The reaction in the west to the explosion of the dam has been weirdly muted. Ukrainians are mounting remarkable rescue operations, while Russia continues to shell semi-submerged cities, but they are doing it more or less alone. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has been mystified by the “zero support” from international organizations such as the UN and Red Cross.
Perhaps the relative lack of support comes partly because people feel helpless in the face of something so immense, these Cecil B DeMille-like scenes of giant rivers exploding. It’s the same helplessness some feel when faced with the climate crisis. It’s apposite that the strongest response to Russia’s ecocide came not from governments but the climate activist Greta Thunberg, who clearly laid the blame of what happened on Russia and demanded it be held accountable. But there’s been barely a peep out of western governments or the UN.
Pushing the strange lure of death, oblivion and just giving up is the Russian gambit. How much life do we have left in us? ~
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jun/11/ecocide-russia-ukraine-war-kakhovka-dam-destroyed
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WHAT BARBIE GETS RIGHT ABOUT MALE PSYCHOLOGY
~ Watching the "Barbie" movie over the weekend, I was surprised by the relatively nuanced portrayal of masculinity, one which resonated with real issues and concerns that I have seen often in my clinical practice. Two aspects stand out in Ryan Gosling’s portrayal of the archetypal Ken.
“Barbie has a great day every day, but Ken only has a great day if Barbie looks at him.”
Near the beginning of the movie, the narrator of the film offers this key distinction between Ken and Barbie, and we see Ken’s face light up when Barbie looks at him, acknowledges him, and shows interest in him. When she doesn’t look his way, however, or when she appears to choose friends over him, Ken slumps dejectedly in what looks like deep shame and self-loathing.
This dynamic and experience is very familiar in a clinical context, particularly in couples therapy. The first concerns the over-valuation of a woman’s gaze and attention on male sense of self-esteem, and even an existential sense of identity. Barbie’s gaze and attention are everything to Ken, and when she does not look or give him attention, it is as if he were alone in the universe.
This feeling is not too dissimilar to the experience that I see in my practice, where men often experience a greater degree of rejection and isolation in a relationship as a result of a perceived lack of attention or affection from their partner or spouse. One area where this plays out very strongly is in the realm of touch and sexuality. Men, in my experience, funnel a lot more "existential value" into their partner’s physical affection, touch, and sexual connection.
When men are having frequent sex, for example, there is often an elated sense of self, masculine assurance, and an overall sense of things being "right in the world." When this active romantic attention drops, however, this can often feel like an existential collapse—where one’s sense of attractiveness, worth, and general self-value can disappear to almost nothing. So much so, that this degraded sense of self can translate into minor resentful behaviors, like grumpy irritation, infantile pleas for sex, or in worse cases, affairs.
The film thematizes this dynamic nicely by showing Ken’s drift into a desire for masculine dominance and "patriarchal" expression; if he can’t have Barbie’s attention and esteeming gaze, he can at least exert his wish for assurance via dominance and other claims of power and authority over other men, women or objects (his mojo dojo man cave).
Clinically speaking, what we see here is the rapid move from shame to anger: Ken experiences deep shame which gets re-routed into resentment and angry expressions of masculinity. If this were couples’ therapy, we would want to give voice to the shame, and instead of indulging the shame through anger, work to find ways to articulate this desire and translate it into perhaps a wooing or seduction that works for his partner and himself. Or, we'd want to find ways to manage and cope with the difficulty of feeling alienated from her gaze. In other words, we'd want to prolong Ken’s capacity to stay with the feelings of shame instead of converting them into a resentment man cave.
2. Sexualizing existential dread and loneliness.
The second case of male psychology that the film enacts well concerns the relationship to shame or existential solitude and the conversion to sex-as-soothing. In the latter parts of the film (spoiler alert!), Barbie decides to take a break from “Barbie and Ken” and he is left feeling alone and adrift. When she approaches him for comfort and conversation, Ken quickly interprets it as an advance and tries to kiss and embrace her (which she rejects).
What I liked about the sequences is how it shows this translation of existential solitude and anxiety into the "quick-fix" of love and sex. In the same way that shame can quickly morph into resentment and anger, here we see loneliness and existential angst being converted into a sexual plea — for sex to solve and resolve these bad feelings.
The cheap solution to this male dread (therapeutically speaking) might be for Barbie to simply give in to his need for an embrace and soothe his feelings of rejection and shame through a kind of pity kiss. From a couples’ therapy approach, however, this would not amount to true and authentic seduction or mutual desire and would, in fact, regress the couple to a kind of maternal relationship where sex is doled out as pity, an act that only tends to reinforce the shame and low self-esteem in the long run (because she ultimately does not desire him authentically).
The clinical “solution” to this need for love and sex is handily dealt with in the film, as Barbie does not negate or absolutely abandon Ken but rather supports him through his tough feelings so he can manage and handle them on his own (she does not presume to resolve the feelings for him).
Oriana:
This whole article seems a complete reversal of countless articles I've read on the need of women to drop their dependence on male approval and fear of displeasing (e.g. by "playing dumb" since a man must always feel smarter), and get the courage to follow their own interests and preferences instead of supporting his dreams, his ambitions. Here it's Ken who needs to learn that he's more than Barbie's boyfriend.
So it's about self-empowerment. I'm beginning to want to see this movie.
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PEOPLE WITH THE DARK TRIAD PERSONALITIES ARE HAPPIER IN RELATIONSHIPS WITH OTHERS WHO SHARE THAT PERSONALITY
A new study indicates that individuals who exhibit Dark Triad traits tend to be more content in their romantic relationships when their partner also possesses similar traits. The research has been published in the Journal of Personality.
The Dark Triad refers to a group of three antagonistic personality traits: psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. Psychopathy is characterized by impulsivity, antagonism, sensation-seeking, and low empathy. Machiavellianism involves self-interest, manipulation, and exploitation of others. Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, entitlement, and a lack of empathy.
These traits have been found to have negative effects on various aspects of life. In particular, they have been associated with harmful outcomes in romantic relationships. Psychopathy, for example, is damaging to romantic relationships as it is linked to exploitative and aggressive behaviors, infidelity, and a lack of commitment and intimacy.
Machiavellianism is associated with emotionally detached relationships, reluctance to commit, and controlling behavior. Individuals high in narcissism tend to have little empathy, take advantage of others, and have low relationship commitment.
The researchers wanted to understand the effects of the Dark Triad traits on relationship outcomes from both partners’ perspectives. They considered not only how an individual’s Dark Triad traits influence their own relationship outcomes but also how these traits affect their partner’s outcomes. They aimed to improve the understanding of how these traits impact relationships by considering the experiences of both partners.
“The Dark Triad personality traits are generally associated to negative relationship outcomes, such as lower satisfaction, quality and stability,” said study author Igor Kardum, a tenured psychology professor at the University of Rijeka in Croatia.
“On the other hand, there is now increasing evidence that romantic couples are similar in these traits, and often more similar than in other personality traits, like those from the Big Five model. So, we wanted to see if the couples who are similar in Dark Triad traits, are also more satisfied with their romantic relationships using state-of-the art statistical approach.”
The researchers conducted their study using a convenience sample of 205 heterosexual couples. They recruited participants by distributing research announcements to friends, colleagues, and students.
To be included in the study, the participants had to meet certain criteria, including being over 18 years old and being in a relationship for at least 1 year. The participants’ ages ranged from 18 to 56 years, and their relationship lengths ranged from 1 to 22 years. Most of the participants had a high school education, and a majority of the men and a significant portion of the women were employed. About 30% of the couples had at least one child.
The research assistants administered questionnaires to each member of the couple separately. The participants rated themselves and their partners on various traits using pen and paper. The order of the measures and the subject of assessment (self or partner) were counterbalanced across participants. The participants were informed that the research aimed to study the characteristics of romantic couples.
To assess the Dark Triad traits, the researchers used three different measures: the Self-Report Psychopathy Scale-III, the MACH-IV, and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory. The participants’ relationship satisfaction was measured using The Perceived Relationship Quality Components Questionnaire, which consisted of six items assessing different aspects of the relationship, such as love, passion, commitment, trust, satisfaction, and intimacy.
The results showed that dissimilarity in psychopathy had a detrimental effect on men’s relationship satisfaction. When men perceived their partners as having higher psychopathy levels, their own satisfaction was lower. Women’s psychopathy, whether self-reported or partner-reported, was consistently related to lower satisfaction in men. These findings suggest that living with a partner who has dissimilar levels of psychopathy can lead to communication problems and a lack of support within the relationship.
Regarding Machiavellianism, higher levels of both self-reported and partner-reported Machiavellianism were negatively related to both men’s and women’s relationship satisfaction. Perceiving one’s partner as higher in Machiavellianism was also linked to lower satisfaction for both the perceiver and their partner. These findings suggest that Machiavellian behaviors, such as taking advantage of others and lack of empathy, can decrease satisfaction in both partners.
Regarding narcissism, dissimilarity in narcissism was related to lower satisfaction for both partners. At both extremes of narcissism, satisfaction was increasingly lower. However, the results for narcissism were less consistent across assessment methods and sources. Men’s partner-reported narcissism was unexpectedly related to higher satisfaction for women, but this effect weakened at higher levels of narcissism.
Overall, the study found that dissimilarity in psychopathy and narcissism had negative effects on relationship satisfaction, while higher levels of Machiavellianism were consistently linked to lower satisfaction in both partners.
“Generally speaking, when choosing a partner, avoid candidates that seem high on psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism. However, if you are yourself ‘on the dark side,’ you might be more content with a similarly dark partner,” Kardum told PsyPost.
The researchers were surprised to find that women’s self-reported and partner-reported Dark Triad traits had a greater impact on both their own and their partners’ relationship satisfaction.
“We detected more negative effects of women’s Dark Triad traits, than of men’s Dark Triad traits, on both women’s and men’s relationship satisfaction,” Kardum said. “This was surprising because these personality characteristics are more pronounced and are usually considered more detrimental in men.”
Tne limitation of the study is its cross-sectional design, which means causal interpretations cannot be made. Longitudinal designs with multiple measurement points would provide a better understanding of how Dark Triad traits affect relationship satisfaction over time.
“First of all, we measured personality and relationship satisfaction in the same time point, which makes it harder to conclude that the direction of effect is from personality to satisfaction, and not the other way around,” Kardum explained. “Future studies should include longitudinal designs to tackle this issue.”
“Another problem that is quite common in couple research is that we usually get the most satisfied couples, since those with the most problematic relationship are not that eager to participate in studies. This lowers our ability to generalize the findings to other couples. A possible solution is to attempt to include participants that are in couple therapy, or that applied for divorce, etc.”
https://www.psypost.org/2023/07/people-with-dark-personalities-feel-more-satisfied-in-romantic-relationships-with-partners-who-also-exhibit-similar-dark-traits-166165
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SERIAL KILLERS — WHAT MAKES THEM DO IT?
For decades, criminologists and true crime documentaries have attempted to understand what causes serial killers to commit the atrocities they do.
Dennis Rader, John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Albert DeSalvo and Ted Bundy are just a few of more than 3,600 serial killers documented in the United States as of 2020, according to the University of Michigan.
Most recently, Rex Heuermann, a 59-year-old New York architect, was arrested and charged with murder in the killings of three of the “Gilgo Four,” a group of four women whose remains were found along a short stretch of Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in 2010. Heuermann, who told his attorney he’s not the killer and pleaded not guilty, is also the prime suspect in the killing of the fourth woman but has yet to be charged in that case.
The unsolved killings confounded authorities on Long Island’s South Shore after the search for one of the missing women led investigators to find at least 10 sets of human remains in addition to hers and launched the hunt for a possible serial killer. As yet, police haven’t linked Heuermann to the eight other human remains.
The Gilgo Beach serial killings have once again raised the question: How could someone do such a thing?
CNN spoke with three forensic psychologists and serial killer experts to better understand what causes people to become serial killers.
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Are serial killers born this way or are they a product of their environment?
Dr. Scott Bonn, criminologist, author and public speaker: It’s likely a combination of the two. Psychopaths are born that way, while sociopaths have been socialized into it. There’s a spectrum, it’s not black and white, and there are multiple factors.
Dr. Louis Schlesinger, professor of forensic psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice: It’s unknown. But there’s a very strong neurobiological component to serial sexual murder because the sexual instinct is biologically determined.
Dr. Katherine Ramsland, professor of forensic psychology and criminal justice at DeSales University: If you study one case, you can identify the influences, but you can’t generalize from that one to all others. You might find some things in common across many cases, such as abuse or head injuries, but it won’t be true of all serial killers.
The Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, killed at least 13 women. DeSalvo was stabbed to death in 1973 while serving a prison sentence for rape.
How do you know a murderer is a serial killer?
Scott Bonn: The way that you know that there’s a serial killer is because they leave consistent markings, consistent evidence that you’re dealing with the same individual.
Louis Schlesinger: If you look at serial sexual murderers, they very often do things with the body above and beyond what is necessary to kill the person, like leaving the victim in a degrading position with their legs spread open with things shoved in or that type of thing. Why did they do that? And the answer is because killing alone is not psychosexually sufficient. So, they have to go above and beyond killing to gratify themselves.
What factors influence a person to become a serial killer?
Katherine Ramsland: There is a great deal of variation in this population, from a range of motives, backgrounds, ages and behaviors, to differences in physiology, sex, mental state and perceptions that influence reasoning and decisions. Each person uniquely processes a given situation in their lives, and some gravitate toward violence. This can be defensive violence or aggressive, psychotic or psychopathic, reactive or predatory, to name some possibilities.
Any factor – abuse, neglect, deviance, bullying – might have different influences on different people, and new experiences can modify perceptions positively or negatively.
Do all serial killers suffer some sort of trauma?
Scott Bonn: There can be a correlation between childhood trauma, but it’s not enough to turn somebody into a serial killer. It’s numerous factors that become a perfect storm that turn a person into a serial killer.
Louis Schlesinger: Most people want to search for a watershed event in somebody’s life that will explain this behavior. “It’s human nature, it’s a natural tendency, he did it because his mother abused them. He did it because this traumatic event happened.” But you’re not going to find it. Poor parenting and childhood trauma, that never helps. But those, in and of themselves, are not dispositive for creating somebody who’s going out and killing for sexual gratification in a series. Thousands of people have had horrible childhoods. They don’t go around killing people in a series.
Are all serial killers psychopaths?
Scott Bonn: Not all psychopaths are serial killers, and not all serial killers are psychopaths. Being a psychopath alone does not make one a serial killer. Something else has to happen.
In the case (of a serial killer who) is a psychopath, their brain functions differently than a normal human brain. They process stimuli differently. In particular, the frontal lobe of the brain is where impulses are controlled. The thing that keeps you from just acting out on your initial knee jerk reaction and from just acting impulsively. Psychopaths have virtually no impulse control.
Many psychopaths function incredibly well in society because they’re very driven, motivated individuals, goal oriented. They are described as very organized, very persuasive, very patient. These are characteristics that make a great architect or a great salesman, but they’re also perfect attributes if you want to be a psychopathic killer.
Louis Schlesinger: The American people want their serial sexual murderers to be evil geniuses with IQs of 180 that speak five languages. Nothing could be further from the truth. The vast majority are unskilled, unemployed, menial work type people. Bundy is an outlier.
What is a serial sexual murderer?
Scott Bonn: The sexual urges, sexuality and arousal became intertwined and twisted with harming things and sadism and blood and an obsession with hurting and death. When that happens, it sets off a trajectory that leads one to become a sexual sadist. This doesn’t happen overnight. No one wakes up one morning and says, “Today is a great day to become a serial killer.” What happens is these impulses begin to take off in right around adolescence, perhaps even earlier, 11 or 12 years old.
It becomes like a fantasy loop that plays over and over in their minds throughout adolescence and into early adulthood. They frequently combine it with masturbation, so they fantasize about doing terrible things to people, bondage and raping and killing, and they become sexually aroused. This reaches ultimately what I like to call a tipping point, often in the early-to-mid 20s, where this fantasy can no longer just live in their daydreams. They have to act out on it, they must feel it. They absolutely have to live this experience. And then that’s when they kill for the first time.
John Wayne Gacy killed 33 men and boys between 1972 and 1978. Many of his victims, mostly drifters and runaways, were buried in a crawlspace beneath his suburban Chicago home.
Louis Schlesinger: Many people, not serial killers, regular people, have sexual fantasies that they keep to themselves. The question then is, if there’s a large number of people with very deviant sexual fantasies getting arousal, for example, from inflicting pain on others, torturing, why does a small number act out? We don’t know. But what seems to happen is there’s a trigger, a loss of some type, which begins the acting out. Loss of a job, loss of a relationship are the two things that tend to trigger it in men. And, incidentally, this is a male situation. There’s no female serial sexual murderers.
Are all serial killers serial sexual murderers?
Louis Schlesinger: There’s a world of difference between someone who’s doing this for sexual gratification, like Ted Bundy, BTK, the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper – those are serial sexual murderers.
A serial killer generically means somebody who killed in a series. They could be contract killers, health care people like nurses that killed patients. You go into any state prison, you’re going to find a number of people in their criminal career that may have killed two to three people.
Scott Bonn: Serial killers are not one size fits all. They fall into different categories, based upon the fantasy psychological need that is served by killing.
The public often misunderstands, and I think comes to an erroneous conclusion that it’s all sex. Sometimes it’s about power, domination and control. And just like the crime of rape, it may be a sexual activity, but it’s really about domination, power and control.
Katherine Ramsland: What defines a serial killer is a specific behavior: having killed two or more victims in at least two incidents. We see behaviors common to certain subsets, but to lump all offenders who’ve committed two or more murders oversimplifies them.
Are there any signs that suggest someone might be a serial sexual murderer?
Louis Schlesinger: I have 10 ominous signs, when seen in combination, that indicate a risk for a potential sex murderer:
Childhood abuse is number one that has very low predictive ability, but it’s in the background of almost all serial sexual murders to one degree or another.
Inappropriate maternal sexual conduct. Boys need to see their mothers as asexual. When an adolescent boy sees his mother behaving sexually, it’s very, very destabilizing.
Pathological lying and manipulation.
Sadistic fantasy with a compulsion to act.
Animal cruelty, particularly toward cats, because cat is a female symbol.
The need to control and dominate others is another one.
Repetitive fire setting.
Voyeurism, fetishes and sexual burglaries, sexually motivated burglary.
Unprovoked attacks on women, associated with generalized misogynist emotions.
Evidence of ritualistic or signature behavior.
Do serial killers feel guilt or awareness that what they’re doing is wrong?
Scott Bonn: Serial killers who may be psychopaths or sociopaths have antisocial personality disorders for which there is no cure. They know right from wrong, they just don’t care. Society’s laws and our morality mean nothing to them. That’s why serial killers almost never are able to use the insanity defense when they go to trial, because they’re not clinically or legally insane. They’re just indifferent to the laws of society and indifferent to the suffering of others.
Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms for the murders of 17 men and boys in the Milwaukee area between 1978 and 1991.
Louis Schlesinger: They know what they’re doing is wrong. Do they feel remorse or guilt? I’m gonna say generally, no. When you cover up the crime scene, when you use burner phones to cover your tracks, that shows you have consciousness of guilt and an awareness of the wrongfulness of your behavior. So, when you go to court, there is no basis for a jury to find you legally insane. You can have all kinds of psychological disturbance. Now, these people are not normal, obviously. But they’re not legally insane.
Keep in mind what I always say, this is not physics, there’s no formula to apply to all these cases. For example, William Heirens, back in the 1940s, he was famous for writing on the bathroom walls of his victims: “Catch me before I kill more. I cannot help myself.” He killed victims and then he put bandages on them. Did he try to undo it in his mind? In overwhelming cases, no, they don’t feel guilt, but Heirens’ behavior speaks to how this is more complicated than yes or no.
How can serial killers lead double lives so easily?
Scott Bonn: With most serial killers, the signs are going to be very subtle, because the problem is the Ted Bundys of the world, the John Wayne Gacys, the Dennis Raders blend into society so easily because they’re chameleons. They have this ability to flip a switch and go from family man to sadistic killer with literally the flip of a switch. Because what they do is called psychological compartmentalization.
Compartmentalization is the ability to completely separate aspects of your life that seem contradicting. You know, Dennis Rader (known as the BTK killer) was a member of the Lutheran Church, president of the church council, Boy Scout leader, successful father and respected man about town who also happened to be one of the most sadistic, horrible serial killers of the 20th century.
So how can those two things coexist? It’s through this process of compartmentalization, where they are able to completely separate it. So there’s no contradiction, he suffers no ambiguity, no cognitive dissonance as a result. To him it’s just two completely different things.
What do you make of Rex Heuermann, the Gilgo Beach killings suspect?
Katherine Ramsland: He’s not convicted, so we can’t say at this time that he’s a serial killer. Just because the victims are sex workers doesn’t mean the motivation was sexual. In the legal papers, there’s a suggestion that one incident was about revenge for being scammed. If the murders sexually excited him and that’s why he did it, then it’s serial sexual homicide.
Scott Bonn: As soon as I heard that (the killer) was carefully disposing of bodies in a very isolated, desolate area on Long Island, it’s difficult to get to, and he was meticulously dismembering the bodies and wrapping them up in burlap sacks, tying them up tightly and neatly and depositing them out there, I knew based upon past cases that this was going to be a very organized, meticulous, unemotional individual who was a planner, sophisticated, probably professional, probably very articulate and persuasive, and lived in that vicinity, because he had to know it intimately. ~
Ted Bundy
Mary:
With war criminals and serial killers we face the problem of evil...one more complicated than assigning evil to the machinations of the Devil, because this is human evil, evil with a human face. I suspect human evil is at base an absolute selfishness, an inability to see, recognize, believe in, the personhood of others. To the truly evil, they are the only one, the only self, the only person...all others are like dolls, there to manipulate and use in whatever way they like. The evil person has no qualms and no regrets. The evil person, the serial killer, has neither conscience nor empathy. They may very well have experienced their own trauma, but that neither explains nor excuses their acts. The experience of trauma is fairly common, and serial killers are not.
I have no tolerance for these evils, for their absolute selfishness, but can't help imagining these men as living in the most profound loneliness, their connections completely destructive, distorted, producing only pain and death. Dahmer, in his nightmare world, was pitiable even in his hideous evil...he kept parts of his victims bodies because he wanted them to stay with him, somehow, in the only way he seemed able to keep them with him. Unspeakable evil, unspeakable loneliness.
Oriana:
An excellent point about loneliness. Not that every loner turns into a serial killer, but yes, there are early clues, and I wish intervention were seen as doable — in fact obligatory when a teacher or a school counselor voices his or her concerns about the potential for violence. The point is to facilitate human connections — cognitive group therapy might be a start. Social skills can be learned, even in the absence of true empathy (at least at first). A therapy dog might be a source of love when connecting with love partners is still too difficult. But we as a society must be willing to invest in mental health. I wonder it I’ll live long enough to see progress in this area. I dearly hope so.
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WHAT REALLY MAKES US HAPPY: HARD WORK
~ The idea that work, or putting effort into tasks, contributes to our general wellbeing is closely related to the psychological concept of eudaimonic happiness. This is the sort of happiness that we derive from optimal functioning and realizing our potential. Research has shown that work and effort is central to eudaimonic happiness, explaining that satisfaction and pride you feel on completing a gruelling task.
On the other side of the work-life balance stands hedonic happiness, which is defined as the presence of positive feelings such as cheerfulness and the relative scarcity of negative feelings such as sadness or anger. We know that hedonic happiness offers empirical mental and physical health benefits, and that leisure is a great way to pursue hedonic happiness.
But even in the realm of leisure, our unconscious orientation towards busyness lurks in the background. A recent study has suggested that there really is such a thing as too much free time – and that our subjective wellbeing actually begins to drop if we have more than five hours of it in a day. Whiling away effortless days on the beach doesn’t seem to be the key to long-term happiness.
This might explain why some people prefer to expend significant effort during their leisure time. Researchers have likened this to compiling an experiential CV, sampling unique but potentially unpleasant or even painful experiences – at the extremes, this might be spending a night in an ice hotel, or joining an endurance desert race. People who take part in these forms of “leisure” typically talk about fulfilling personal goals, making progress and accumulating accomplishments – all features of eudaimonic happiness, not the hedonism we associate with leisure.
the real balance
A rich and diverse experiential happiness is the third component of a “good life”, in addition to hedonic and eudaimonic happiness.
Across nine countries and tens of thousands of participants, researchers recently found that most people (over 50% in each country) would still prefer a happy life typified by hedonic happiness. But around a quarter prefer a meaningful life embodied by eudaimonic happiness, and a small but nevertheless significant amount of people (about 10-15% in each country) choose to pursue a rich and diverse experiential life.
Given these different approaches to life, perhaps the key to long-lasting well-being is to consider which lifestyle suits you best: hedonic, eudaimonic or experiential. Rather than pitching work against life, the real balance to strike post-pandemic is between these three sources of happiness. ~
https://www.lifehacker.com.au/2021/09/what-really-makes-us-happy-might-surprise-you/
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MARTIN LUTHER: REASON IS A WHORE
Martin Luther said that 500 years ago (not sure if the Baptists realize that). The full quote is:
“Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.”
Also: “But since the devil's bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she's wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil's greatest whore.”
“Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God.”
“Reason is the Devil's greatest whore; by nature and manner of being she is a noxious whore; she is a prostitute, the Devil's appointed whore; whore eaten by scab and leprosy who ought to be trodden under foot and destroyed, she and her wisdom ... Throw dung in her face to make her ugly. She is and she ought to be drowned in baptism... She would deserve, the wretch, to be banished to the filthiest place in the house, to the closets.”
He also believed that Prussia was inhabited by an infinite number of demons.
“This fool [Copernicus] wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; but sacred scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the sun to stand still, and not the earth.”
“To be a Christian, you must pluck out the eye of reason.”
I’ve always admired the courage of Luther, who risked his life to expose the corruption of the Catholic church, but his hatred of reason is very revealing . . .
Perhaps only his anti-Semitism was even more vehement.
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WHAT? NO ANIMAL SACRIFICES TO YAHWEH?
“William James opined at the turn of the twentieth century (1902): “Today a deity who should require bleeding sacrifices to placate him would be too sanguinary to take seriously.” But a century later, few would agree publicly with Thomas Nagel when he candidly says he would not want such a god to exist. . . . If pressed, many people insist that the anthropomorphic languages used to describe god is metaphorical, not literal. One might suppose, then, that the curious adjective “God-fearing” would have faded into disuse over the years, a fossil trace of a rather embarrassingly juvenile period in our religious past, but far from it. People want a god who can be loved and feared the way you love or fear another person. “Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism. The gods believed in — whether by crude savages or by men disciplined intellectually — agree with each other in recognizing personal calls,” James observed. “Today, quite as much as at any previous age, the religious individual tells you that the divine meets him on the basis of his personal concerns.”
~ Daniel Dennett, “Breaking the Spell”
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MORE EDUCATION, LESS RELIGIOSITY
~ I was brought up in my father’s religion. As I learned more about the world around me, questions began to form in my mind about the beliefs, traditions, and practices of his religion. As a young teenager, I began to read and more questions emerged.
Why did other children follow their parent’s religion, often following that religion throughout life? Why did each religion have legends, traditions, and stories founded on the location of the forming of the religion? The Judaeo-Christian practice had deserts, local rivers, and particular villages, towns, and cities at their core. Hindus had forests and elephants and events at important locations in the Indian subcontinent. Native Americans in Southern Colorado had a sleeping warrior as part of their Southwestern pantheon of gods and important locations.
Then, I found myself praying to a god that such a powerful and benevolent deity could certainly make sure that I received an “A” rather than a “B” on my geometry test. A light glowed in my head. There wasn’t a god “out there.” In a time of need (and fear), I had just created a god that I needed at that moment. That god had to be powerful enough to enter someone’s mind “my teacher” and make them do this god’s will. God didn’t create us. We individually create the god we need.
Fear the unknown? Call on a god so that all you have to do is say “god did it.”
Fear a terminal death? Create a god and a heaven that takes you after death.
Need an omnipotent father figure to figuratively take your hand and guide you through the travails and difficulties and hardships and losses in life? Create that god.
Then I took some courses in comparative religion and began to read the bible. And, I started to read scholarly articles on events in the bible. Holy badoobers! This god character demanded fealty, unquestioning loyalty, and regular attention under penalty of getting smitten. And smite this god did, wiping out anyone he didn’t like, eradicating entire villages, forcing his favorites (like David) do evil deeds to others to prove himself. How about demanding a father sacrifice his beloved son? This god character in the bible is a narcissistic, sociopathic, sadistic creature.
Then I learned more about the mistranslations that resulted in the English bible we use, the contradictions from chapter to chapter, and book to book.
Next, I asked myself why I should follow and emulate the beliefs of a people from 4000 years ago. So much has been learned about people, about the world around us. Things that were considered magical back then were now explained by chemistry, physics, and biology. Why would I want to immerse myself in such a primitive belief system and limited knowledge base?
The more I learned, the less I needed a god or a religion. I learned about the scientific method. Using it, I tested hypotheses and developed new technologies that help better the human condition. Religion and a belief in god would not have permitted any of that to occur.
At this time, there is no god in my life. I don’t want or need a god of any kind. I feel a sense of freedom without god and religion. The unknown reinforces my sense of curiosity and desire for discovery. ~ Ronald Cohen, Quora
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STRENGTH TRAINING (PLANK, WALL SQUATS) AMONG THE BEST WAYS TO LOWER BLOOD PRESSURE
Strength-training exercises such as wall squats or holding the plank position are among the best ways to lower blood pressure, a study suggests.
Current guidance focusing mainly on walking, running and cycling should be updated, the UK researchers say.
Analysis, published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, of trials involving 16,000 people found all exercise lowered high blood pressure.
But wall squats and planking led to larger falls in blood pressure than aerobic exercise.
These isometric exercises are designed to build strength without moving muscles or joints.
The plank position, which resembles a press-up, with elbows directly beneath shoulders, legs stretched out behind, strengthens the abdomen. (Try to hold for two minutes.)
Isometric exercises place a very different stress on the body than aerobic exercise, says study author Dr Jamie O'Driscoll, from Canterbury Christ Church University.
"They increase the tension in the muscles when held for two minutes, then cause a sudden rush of blood when you relax," he says.
"This increases the blood flow, but you must remember to breathe.”
High blood pressure puts strain on the blood vessels, heart and other organs, increasing the risk of conditions such as heart attacks and strokes.
Treatment often involves medication but patients are also advised to eat healthily, reduce alcohol intake, stop smoking and exercise regularly.
Over-40s are advised to have their blood pressure checked every five years.
The pressure of blood in the arteries is measured in millimeters of mercury (mmHg). Below 130/85mmHg is healthy while more than 140/90 mmHg is high, according to the study.
The higher number equates to pressure of blood in the arteries when the heart beats, known as systolic blood pressure.
The lower number is pressure between beats and known as diastolic blood pressure.
For their analysis, researchers from Canterbury Christ Church University and Leicester University looked at data from 15,827 people exercising for two weeks or more in 270 clinical trials published between 1990 and 2023.
They found resting blood pressure was reduced by:
4.49/2.53mmHg after aerobic-exercise training (such as running or cycling)
4.55/3.04mm Hg after dynamic resistance or weight training
6.04/2.54mmHg after combined training (aerobic and weights)
4.08/2.50mmHg after high-intensity interval training (short bursts of intense exercise with periods of rest in between)
8.24/4mmHg after isometric-exercise training (planks and wall squats)
These are relatively small drops, Dr O'Driscoll says, but could lower someone's risk of stroke.
Current UK guidelines say adults should do at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity exercise a week, or 75 minutes of vigorous activity, plus muscle-strengthening exercise twice a week.
In addition, Dr O'Driscoll says they should consider two minutes of wall squats, or holding the plank position four times with two minutes' rest in between, three times a week.
The British Heart Foundation charity said exercise was good for heart health and could reduce the risk of heart and circulatory diseases by up to 35%.
"We know that those who take on exercise they enjoy, tend to carry on for longer which is key in maintaining lower blood pressure," says Joanne Whitmore, senior cardiac nurse at the BHF.
She also pointed to other lifestyle changes that could help, such as cutting down on salt, keeping to a healthy weight and continuing to take any prescribed medication.
Anyone concerned about their blood pressure is advised to ask their GP to check it and ask about the type of exercise best suited to your condition.
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-66303982
Oriana:
From personal experience: what really worked for me is sufficient morning and evening doses of CBD — cannabidiol oil. It produces no high, even if it contains traces of THC.
Unfortunately, it has to be high potency to have this effect (3,000 mg for a small container). It’s more expensive than mainstream blood pressure drugs, but, again in my experience, it’s more effective than those drugs and doesn’t have side effects. CBD oil is an anti-inflammatory; it appears to be calming to the brain, acting like a mild sedative without robbing you of energy.
This is not to discourage anymore from taking up exercise — especially planks and wall squalls) in order to lower their blood pressure. In my case, CBD oil had a dramatic effect.
I also found ubiquinol (the active form of CoQ10) and fish oil fairly effective. But the effectiveness of CBD can be mind-blowing by comparison.
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ALPHA-KETOGLUTARATE
~ Metabolism and aging are tightly connected. Alpha-ketoglutarate is a key metabolite in the tricarboxylic acid (TCA) cycle, and its levels change upon fasting, exercise, and aging. Here, we investigate the effect of alpha-ketoglutarate (delivered in the form of a calcium salt, CaAKG) on healthspan and lifespan in C57BL/6 mice. To probe the relationship between healthspan and lifespan extension in mammals, we performed a series of longitudinal, clinically relevant measurements. We find that CaAKG promotes a longer, healthier life associated with a decrease in levels of systemic inflammatory cytokines. We propose that induction of IL-10 by dietary AKG suppresses chronic inflammation, leading to health benefits. By simultaneously reducing frailty and enhancing longevity, AKG, at least in the murine model, results in a compression of morbidity.
IN BRIEF
Asadi Shahmirzadi et al. report that an alpha-ketoglutarate-supplemented diet extends lifespan of middle-aged female mice and increases healthspan in both sexes. With simultaneous reduction in frailty and increase in longevity, the intervention compresses morbidity. AKG suppresses chronic inflammation and induces secretion of IL-10 in T cells of female mice.
AKG is involved in various fundamental processes, including central metabolism, collagen synthesis), epigenetic regulation), and stem cell proliferation. Due to its broad biological roles, AKG has been a subject of interest for researchers in various fields. We find that CaAKG supplementation promotes longer, healthier life associated with decreased levels of inflammatory cytokines in mice. ~
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8508957
and this:
Alpha-ketoglutarate (AKG) is an intermediate in the Krebs cycle involved in various metabolic and cellular pathways. As an antioxidant, AKG interferes in nitrogen and ammonia balance, and affects epigenetic and immune regulation. These pleiotropic functions of AKG suggest it may also extend human healthspan. Recent studies in worms and mice support this concept. A few studies published in the 1980s and 1990s in humans suggested the potential benefits of AKG in muscle growth, wound healing, and in promoting faster recovery after surgery. So far there are no recently published studies demonstrating the role of AKG in treating aging and age-related diseases; hence, further clinical studies are required to better understand the role of AKG in humans.
and this:
Due to influence on mitochondrial respiration, AKG can stimulate production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) by mitochondria. According to hormesis hypothesis, moderate stimulation of ROS production could have rather beneficial biological effects, than detrimental ones, because of the induction of defensive mechanisms that improve resistance to stressors and age-related diseases and slow down functional senescence.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34952764/
Up to the age of 40, the body is able to produce a sufficient amount of AKG and after that its production by the body radically decreases. Studies demonstrate that the levels of AKG at the age of 80 are just 10% of that found in the body at aged 40.
AKG helps to maintain cellular energy and promotes cell renewal, which can prevent age-related illness and weakness. It acts as a nitrogen scavenger and provides glutamine and glutamate to support protein synthesis and prevent protein degradation in muscles. It can decrease protein catabolism (breakdown of proteins) and increase protein synthesis which leads to bone tissue formation in the skeletal muscles and can be used in clinical applications. It also provides protection to patients experiencing heart surgery by reducing metabolic abnormalities and giving improved myocardial protection.
Ca-AKG is helpful to improve amino acid metabolism. It can reduce the ammonia levels in the cells because of its ability to decrease hyperphosphatemia (high phosphate level in blood which can cause muscle spasms). Additionally, it provides a significant source of glutamate and glutamine in the cellular metabolism which leads to the protein synthesis and inhibits protein deterioration in muscle, and constitutes an important metabolic fuel for cells of the gastrointestinal tract.
AKG is not available in the human diet but exercise and fasting can promote an increase in the production of AKG. However, direct supplementation is a more effective and feasible route to restore AKG levels.
https://decodeage.com/blogs/news-and-blogs/5-benefits-of-ca-akg-discover-how-one-powerful-natural-ingredient-can-make-a-positive-effect-on-aging
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NO TIME FOR EXERCISE? INCREASE YOUR NEAT (NON-EXERCISE ACTIVITY THERMOGENESIS)
Even small behavior changes can amplify or diminish how much NEAT you get, and this can shape your health in powerful ways.
Studies also found that people of the same size can have dramatically different levels of NEAT, based on factors like their job and where they live, as well as their biological drive to get up and move around.
What's clear is that many of us who live screen-based lives have the capacity to inject more NEAT into our daily rhythms, not necessarily through seismic changes in our lifestyle, but small-scale ones that mostly just require a shift in mindset.
Here's what to know about how NEAT works and how to get more of it.
NEAT fills in the slack in your energy expenditure
Much of our daily energy expenditure is relatively fixed. More than half of those calories go toward supporting basic bodily functions, what's known as our basal metabolic rate.
"That's for the most part not modifiable," explains Seth Creasy, an exercise physiologist at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus. "There are some things that can maybe change your basal metabolic rate, but not drastically.”
Digesting and metabolizing food takes up another sliver of our daily energy, roughly about 10%, and likewise cannot be changed significantly.
"That leaves the remaining 30% to 40% for all your activity," says Colleen Novak, a neuroscientist whose lab studies NEAT at Kent State University.
That's where NEAT comes in – moving around as you go about your day can chip away at that remaining slice of the energy pie.
And even among those who do exercise regularly, NEAT usually plays a bigger role in calorie burning than working out.
It's not that NEAT should be considered a substitute for more structured bouts of intense physical exercise, which has its own well-established health benefits. But revving up NEAT can be more accessible for some people, especially those who don't exercise as much, if at all.
"Sometimes it's hard to carve out 30 to 60 minutes of your day to do an exercise routine," says Creasy. "These little behaviors can accumulate and end up comprising a lot of energy expenditure.”
Common daily activities increase your NEAT by surprising amount
Sitting up as you would at the computer only burns about 5% to 7% more calories than if you were lying down at rest. Fidgeting excessively while seated can bring that up a few percentage points.
"If I then start to move around, let's say ironing or folding up clothes, I can move that to 15%," he says. "But it all changes the moment I start to walk.”
Just strolling about one and a half to two miles an hour — the speed people tend to go while shopping — can double your metabolic rate.
All of this starts to give a sense of how seemingly trivial movements, like walking to the corner store, or mowing the lawn, can add up to make a big difference over the course of the day. Even chewing gum can go a surprisingly long way (about 20 calories an hour above your resting metabolic rate, according to Levine's calculations.)
He offers the all-too-familiar example of coming home from work, sitting down and watching TV for the rest of the night. If that's your entire evening, your NEAT could end up at just 30 calories. Taking up household projects that force you to move around when you get home could alternatively bring up your NEAT by 700 calories or more in the same time frame.
It's a simple idea at its core: Inject mobility — ideally whatever gets you walking around — into what would otherwise default into sitting time.
An internal Apple watch: biology may affect our drive toward NEAT
Evidence suggests that some people have a better ability to sense when they take in extra calories and this may set in motion an unconscious drive to move more.
In the 1990s, Levine and his colleagues carried out a now widely cited study examining what happened to 16 lean people who were fed an extra 1,000 calories a day for two months. The found weight gain varied considerably and that levels of NEAT directly predicted how well someone was able to avoid putting on fat.
"People who have the capacity to burn off extra calories and remain thin are people who can switch on their NEAT," Levine says.
The idea that NEAT is naturally dialed up or down in response to how much energy you are taking in hasn't always been replicated in subsequent research, says Cathy Kotz, an integrative biologist and physiologist who studies obesity at the University of Minnesota.
"It's just been a little bit hard to study that compensatory action," she notes, "I would say the jury is still out.”
However, evidence from the lab supports the idea that our biology plays a role in NEAT. Kotz is researching a compound in the brain, called orexin, that appears to have a key role in regulating NEAT.
She was studying how it influenced feeding behavior in animals when she noticed that it also was having another effect.
"Through a lot of experiments, we discovered that when we either give the animals more orexin, or we stimulate their orexin neurons in the brain, it causes them to move more," she says.
This may help explain why certain animals in the same setting with the same food end up gaining weight, while others don't.
In the context of NEAT, Kotz describes the role of orexin as "similar to what our Apple Watch is trying to do – every now and again reminding us, 'hey, you should stand up, you should move around.’"
"Orexin seems to do this naturally," she says.
These kinds of experiments haven't yet been done yet in humans, but the hope, Kotz says, is that a medication could leverage orexin so that it's easier for people to be active. However, that doesn't mean people who have lower orexin "signaling or tone" are destined to be sedentary.
"I think it can be overcome just by being conscious and aware of the fact that you do need to move more," she says.
Novak says increasing NEAT is an "untapped resource" for managing weight, but that it's not effective on its own — that is, absent changes in diet.
Keeping your NEAT levels up has long-term health benefits
It's not all about weight. Being sedentary is associated with a range of health problems independent of obesity, from cardiovascular disease to joint problems to mental health issues.
Keeping yourself moving is all the more important as we age, says Todd Manini, an epidemiologist who researches physical activity and aging at the University of Florida.
In one study, Manini tracked how much energy about 300 older adults expended from physical activity, including exercise, over about two weeks.
This snapshot of their daily energy expenditure helped predict the risk of being alive or dead about seven to 10 years later. For every 287 calories a person burned per day, there was about a 30% lower chance of dying.
"We immediately thought that the people in this higher group would be the all-stars of exercising," says Manini, "But that wasn't the case at all.”
It turned out those who were less likely to die didn't exercise more than others. It seemed to be the NEAT in their lives. "They were more likely to have stairs where they live and were more likely to volunteer," he says.
"Those things we don't equate to exercise, but it is movement," he says.
Skip the shortcuts and increase your NEAT
The solutions for maximizing NEAT aren't necessarily sexy (although that, too, can burn quite a few calories), but many of them are relatively easy to take up. They often involve choosing to make slightly more effort, rather than choosing convenience.
Unfortunately, our natural impulses to move can be in direct conflict with the environment around us. Many people sit at screens to do their work, and take care of their personal errands like banking and shopping, and for their leisure time.
For those with office jobs, work exerts an especially powerful influence over our NEAT. "If your brain is sharing signals to move and you have a job that ties you to the chair, it's unnatural and you don't move," says Levine.
NEAT varies greatly across societies and occupations. Research shows there can be as much as a 2,000-calorie difference between people of the same body size, depending on how physically active their occupation is.
"People who are living in agricultural communities are literally moving three times more than even lean or overweight people in North America, just in the environments in which they live," he says.
Novak likes to use the example of her own grandparents when describing the two ends of the NEAT spectrum.
"One lived on a farm and was constantly out doing things, digging out weeds. You just couldn't have them sit down," she says. "The other grandparent just preferred to chill and talk to us."
Estimates show that someone who has to sit down for work might burn 700 calories per day through NEAT; a job that involves standing all day would be twice that.
Since jobs take up so much time, it's a smart place to try to increase NEAT.
Try standing desks, walking during meetings, or if you work from home, try breaking up the work day with household chores.
Levine's personal NEAT trick: Instead of hunting for the closest parking spot, he finds one farther away and walks 20 minutes.
"Then I walk back at the end of the day and take my car and go home," he says. "That's a 40 minute walk, 100 calories for free!"
Outside of work, mundane tasks like vacuuming, doing the laundry or gardening can burn a few hundred calories in an hour. Playing a video game can go from about 50 calories an hour to more than 100 if you move around. Taking the stairs can more than triple the amount of energy you'd use when riding the elevator. Even watching TV can be transformed if you walk around during commercials.
"I was surprised that making your bed actually expends more calories than other activities that you might think of, like taking a slow walk," says Manini.
Worth noting: Manini says the calorie estimates in popular wearable devices can measure walking pretty well, but they aren't all that accurate at gauging other lifestyle activities.
Ultimately, the key is to root out the shortcuts that hamper our natural impulses to move.
"The power of NEAT is that it's available to absolutely everybody," Levine says. "We can all do it and we can all do a little bit more.”
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/07/22/1189303227/neat-fitness-non-exercise-activity-thermogenesis?ft=nprml&f=103537970
Ending on beauty:
ABODE
The grass between the tombs is intensely green.
From steep slopes a view onto the bay,
Onto islands and cities below. The sunset
grows garish, slowly fades. At dusk
Light prancing creatures. A doe and a fawn
Are here, as every evening, to eat the flowers
Which people brought for their beloved dead.
~ Milosz, Provinces
