"Start and restart as many times as you have to." - Unknown
"If you have more than you need, build a longer table, not a higher fence." - Unknown
"Beware of the tiny gods frightened men create." - Hafiz
"I really have a secret satisfaction in being considered rather mad." - W. Heath Robinson
"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go."
- Theodore Roethke, The Waking
"If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty." - Japanese proverb
"I exist as I am, that is enough." - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
"Where I had learned the idea of absence, I was beginning to learn the idea of trace. There is always something left behind. That is the essential paradox. Even abandonment gives us memory." - Robert Kroetsch
"Grief can take care of itself, but to get full value of a joy you must have somebody to divide it with." - Mark Twain
"Oftentimes I have hated in self-defense; but if I were stronger I would not have used such a weapon." - Kahlil Gibran Sand and Foam
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[Reading Notes] Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) - Dean Spade
These notes are from the introduction.
Introduction, 1
... the contemporary political moment is defined by emergency.
Sometimes I dislike the word politics, or any of its fellows, being used in this way. Sometimes people glom onto that word and define everything that follows in terms of political party or by how a person votes - not by the over-arching era that is meant by the term above - as if there was no other way to define these situations of existential dread we face daily.
It's hard, sometimes, to see the interconnectedness of all these things - disease, climate disaster, war, wealth inequality, and the like - a difficulty that more and more frequently seems deliberately built. Or, rather, that it's so grossly overwhelming we can only take in so much at a time., and sometimes that taking in challenges privilege, status quo, and sunk cost.
In the face of this, more and more ordinary people are feeling called to respond in their communities, creating bold and innovative ways to share resources [...] produces social spaces where people grow new solidarities. At its best, mutual aid actually produces new ways of living where people get to create systems of care and generosity that address harm and foster well-being.
This goes beyond things like food banks, but does include things like community fridges. I seem to recall reading that they were originally created to help combat food waste, which is a noble goal in and of itself, but there's no denying the help they've been in combatting food insecurity as well.
Black Panthers' neighbourhood ambulance service and meal programs for kids, current popularity of repair popups, volunteer-based home delivery for food banks, buddy walk programs to provide safety for women, etc.
Introduction, 2
Left social movements have two big jobs right now. First, we need to organize to help people to survive the devastating conditions unfolding every day. Second, we need to mobilize hundreds of millions of people for resistance so we can tackle the underlying causes of these crises.
We know that's what needs to happen, but how? It is an ever-burdening struggle to fight systems that have become so adept at propagandising us to prevent us from building the necessary community. Our differences, instead of being celebrated, enjoyed, or even just accepted as part of the natural order of things, are used as weapons to foster otherness, to kindle disregard, distrust, superiority. Things that are then used as fuel for resource theft, racism, and dehumanisation. Look how the "welfare bum" myths still persist, how those in poverty are not only blamed for their own lot in life (without anyone seeing the systemic accountability), but also for the wider societal ills, or even just government-oriented fiscal ones. We know the real culprits are corporations, capitalism, and a cultivated lack of empathy and compassion.
We do see some of the fight happening now - people banding together for a common cause. But TPTB still hold the balance of power. Poverty is still rampant, privation rampant, and bombs are still dropping.
The way to tackle these two big tasks - meeting people's needsa nd mobilizing them for resistance ...
I think the most significant thing to bear in mind here, is that one single solution can't fix every issue. It needs many, and just as many adaptations. Another thing, too, is that much of what gets done is going to have to be done as an end run around capitalism and government. Things must be done in spite of them, because there will be no help from them. What's that saying? Something like: "you can't ask the perpetrator of the disease to help heal the sickness."
Introduction, 5
... what mutual aid is, why it is different than charity ...
Charity is a service provided. Mutual aid is a community built.
[Reading Notes] Freedom is a Constant Struggle: Ferguson, Palestine, and the Foundations of a Movement - Angela Davis
So far, just the introduction written by Frank Barat.
Introduction, IX
You can be an outsider, but not outside the system, and you can have political beliefs, even radical ones, but they need to stay within the bounds of the permissible, inside the bubble that has been drawn for you by the elites.
I am reminded of something I recently heard, a negating view of George Carlin that had not, heretofore, occurred to me, though it probably should have. We tend to see Carlin as a bit of an outside, a negator of the status quo, even rebellious. But this person had said that Carlin "exists because they let him". There's a lot of implication there. One thing that comes to mind is a pressure valve, and one of proximity. Listening to Carlin allows us to release some of the pressures we feel living in the culture that we do. He frames and vocalises our own critiques. And, by that proximity, we might feel we also have. Once we do, perhaps we sometimes feel we've "done our bit" and slide back into complacency again.
The means by which so many of us vocalise our frustrations now, build budding community, and even start our foray into protest - social media - are channels we do not control. These channels are owned and controlled by elites of varying stripes. They allow us these channels, shape the content we have access to, throttle or even silence the words of our online compatriots, and can even erase those same channels with the flip of a switch. If they weren't so greedy for money, they'd no doubt be gone altogether.
While some have learned to manipulate these channels for the benefit of the "good guys", that number of people is tiny and doesn't exist on all platforms. I am thinking, really, of how some users of TikTok have learned to play with the algorithm in order to push out pro-Palestinian content past the "shadow banning" and other forms of content curtailing.
Introduction, X
... an imposing building made of grayness and glass.
So many modern structures might be imposing by size, but are they in any other way? Buildings of importance used to be attractive, architectural marvels, designed to be remembered and impacting. But, to me at least, the structures of stone and glass so prevalent now, seem created so we don't remember them, so their impact plays on quietly in the background as our eyes slide over their edifices one after another, a nondescript grey wall, a weird form of forgetful homogeneity.
Introduction, XI
The powerful have sent us a message: obey, and if you seek collective liberation, then you will be collectively punished.
We all know now that not only is what's happening to Gazans particularly is not only a collective punishment for them, it's a warning to the rest of us. That message was always there, particularly loudly from the US at times, in the form of how they so easily allow their own children to die rather than enacting gun legislation that could save them. "We will do this to our own. We will do it to you." Other genocides pass in crushing and saddening silence. We never know what's going on in Sudan or Congo in order to provide us our comforts, But, Palestine is loud - it's a canon shot in the face to us all: You're next. Acclimatise to the allowed cruelty and keep your mouth shut.
... all around us and up close, we are being told not to care, not to collectivize, not to confront.
I remember, back in October 2023, someone who'd been engaged in activism for a long time, gave the newbies a piece of advice. They warned us that the situation with Gaza was going to be a long fight, years, and that we needed to pace ourselves so we could be in it for the long haul. Pace ourselves so we didn't burn out. I learned that there is no shame in needing to take a step back for however long you need in order to keep going again. We know the cruelty to Palestinians doesn't let up, but there are enough voices and bodies out here on their side that we can take our turns away from the fight so that the collective of us can keep the battle going.
Introduction, XII
... talk about our struggle as activists.
Granted, most of us don't know where to start and will almost never put in the body-breaking level of work that some activists do. But, what has surprised me most ... no, that's not the right word or way to put it. What I've found most saddening, disappointing, about the past couple of years, is the level of even minimal inconvenience people are willing to embrace in order to even do something as simple as send a message. By which I mean things like following some of th BDS recommendations and doing something as small as not buying from Starbucks. How hard can it be to give that up so that union busting Z-supporting conglomerate gets one less dollar to harm Palestinians with. I thought better of people.
... how to build links with other social struggles [...] what is happening in Palestine is also about them.
Outside the obviousness of so much of our tax dollars being sent directly to Israel, how it is that so many people can so readily claim this situation has nothing to do with them is baffling to me. How does one choose to not empathise with the inhuman conditions visited upon them, or have compassion for the battered Palestinian people? If I hear the phrase "It's got nothing to do with me" one more time...
Introduction, XIV
... it's in everyone's power to partake in the struggle.
That is almost universally true. You can, even if you can't leave the house.
I've shared a couple of things recently that are any thoughts or notes that I'm making while reading books. Is it a habit I picked up during university? Yes. Has it ever gone away? Not remotely. After university, though, I was confining it to marginalia. In uni, there were also a lot of sticky notes.
Reactions like this, keeping notes like this, might be one of the sorts of things one usually did in a physical commonplace book, which is a concept I adore. But though my thoughts flow better in certain ways when I handwrite, handwriting is only a thing I can do with quality when seated at a solid surface - which is not always where I'm reading.
I'm a much better thinker by pen than by mouth, so talking notes isn't going to do it. I wonder why that is, why my hands think better than my mouth does. I can rattle for hours with a pen in my hand. It's almost like it thinks for itself, and much speedier at that.
Here we are, then. Messy notes, transcribed to a readable form.
And to answer a final question. Yes, I will do this for fiction books too.
I put together a list of all the Iai waza that I could dig up for Muso Shinden Ryu and Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu. The caveat, though, is that I'm absolutely certain there's some things missing. It's also worth noting that there are multiple versions of some of our koryu waza.
Corrections and additions are always welcome.
To level the playing field, most everyone learns seitei Iai waza as set out by the ZNKR, governed by the Canadian Kendo Federation here. This set ensures that people from different schools are taught something that can be more evenly judged. Each different school of Iaido has different waza. I don't know that any other than Muso Shinden Ryu (the form I study) and Muso Jikiden Eishin Ryu are taught in North America. There are others, though.
There are also schools that teach Jikiden, at least, that aren't under the banner of ZNKR, but other organisations. I am not familiar with how they teach nor do gradings. You'll notice that between MSR and MJER there is some name similarity - some of those waza are the same as the ones in the other school, some have the same intent but are done slightly differently, some are different waza but given the same/similar names.
Junto and Kaishaku, for example, have the same purpose/intent, but are done differently. I've heard that some don't consider it a waza at all, but more a form of etiquette. In my school, and in Jikiden schools also that I know of, this is never performed in front of outsiders, would never be used as a demo, and would never be used as part of grading, out of respect for its original purpose and those involved. You can find videos of both Junto and Kaishaku on YouTube.
Anyhow, there are 12 Seitei waza. The ones with a star are the ones I used for my ikkyu grading so many moons in the wayback:
Yukizure
Tsuredachi
So Makuri
So Dome
Shinobu
Yukichigai
Sode Surigaeshi
Mon'iri
Kabezoe
Ukenagashi
Itomagoi Sono Ichi
Itomagoi Sono Ni
Itomagoi Sono San
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[Reading Notes] Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media - Noam Chomsky / Edward S. Herman
I'm still in the bowels of the introduction of this book, so all these notes are in regards to that. It's a damned long introduction - and then there's a preface.
"They who have put out the people's eyes, reproach them of their blindness." - John Milton
The above was part of the dedication section of the book, and will no doubt play an enormous role in anything I say about media manipulation, or any manipulation at all - which is absolutely the point of the quotation.
Introduction, XI
Structural factors are those such as censorship and control, dependence on other major funding sources (notably, advertisers), and mutual interests and relationships between the media and those who make the news and have the power to define it and explain what it means.
As I sit here thinking about what remains of what we could conceive of as independent news media or journalism and how we could, if at all, protect it, I think about where we could house archives and production sources like websites and social media. And it hit me with some shame that Canada could not be trusted to house and protect such things. We are as guilty of the propagandisation of news as any other power with enough sway to swing a narrative or buy one off, or even go so far as to shut one up entirely.
The basic principles and ideologies that are taken for granted by media personal and the elite, but are often resisted by the general population [...] the same underlying power sources that own the media and fund them [...] often play a key role in fixing basic principles and the dominant ideologies.
I don't yet know what's being referred to here as the "basic principles and ideologies", but the first thing that leapt to mind was the concept that the news media as fed to us, reporting and journalism, should be unbiased. But this would not apply to those making the news, only those consuming it.
It is, of course, absolutely impossible to create the type of news we consume without a bias. All humans have bias. I've always thought it was an unreasonable expectation to demand as much bias, however insincerely, from journos as we do. One should always consume with the idea there's a bias, but learn to find/see the bias and filter news accordingly, along with seeking out multiple sources.
Should news sources offer their stories as objectively as they can? We'd certainly like them to. But a slant is always going to be there, whether from the journo themselves or their paymasters.
One wonders if that concept has either been built deliberately to foster a false sense of security and trust amongst the populace, or was it simply allowed to exist and evolve in that way and the media simply road its coattails. It occurs to me that I do not actually know the source of the idea that journalism/reporting (specifically) is supposed to be unbiased.
Introduction, XIV
The culture and ideology fostered in this globalization relate largely to "lifestyle" themes and goods and their acquisition; and they tend to weaken any sense of community helpful to civic life.
Capitalism, especially in the US, was ever thus - doing whatever it can to further itself - and with the over-push on individualism, more money can be wrested from a person for that which fills gaps left by the lack of community.
On top of that, seemingly communal things can also still be sold - commodification has replaced service provision (by the government).
I had a tiny fracas one time with someone who refused to comprehend that product placement doesn't have much, if any/or the same sort of, impact on me that it has on the average other. I'm legally blind. I don't always see big things right in front of me, nevermind anything else, anything "cleverly" placed.
... account[s] in the late 1990s documents the fascination, even the obsession, of the world's middle class youth with consumer brands and products.
Hardly surprising, when you have a class of people raised on consumerism (which existed even in their entertainment as children), and social gaps left by eroding family time because of working parents, etc. Consumerism is a way to increase a sense of elitism or social superiority - the concept of "keeping up with the Jones'" transferred to acquisition hunger in young people who want to wear the "right" brand of jeans, and so forth. The rise of the middle class created a need for things to foster and uphold the middle class. One opened the door for the other.
None of this is all that surprising given that the major third space for youth of that time was the mall.
The global media's "news" attention in recent years [...] hyas been inordinately directed to sensationalism.
Clickbait fuels consumption, as do dopamine hits and any high key emotion of any sort. Though we do seem to enjoy too much having our baser instincts tickled.
Introduction, XV
The global balance of power has shifted decisively toward commercial systems.
Everything has become commodified, even our joy. This is a more than nauseating situation, given that very few people will ever benefit from the commodification, or ever could.
... the "malling" of public broadcasting.
The merging of networks, the adoption of commercial "habits" to compete, has eroded any difference between public and commercial services. Stifling homogeneity leaves no real difference from one commercial service to another.
Some argue that the internet and the new communications technologies are breaking the corporate stranglehold on journalism and opening an unprecedented era of interactive democratic media [...] the internet has increased the efficiency and scope of individual and group networking.
While this was true for a time, it's only partially true now. Yes, the internet opens up communications abilities to more and more people, allowing more and more groups to communicate with each other in a way that had previously been impossible. But, since most internet access is now in the hands of the same commercial conglomerates that news media is, the freedoms are not there as readily as we'd like them to be. These groups have very specific agendas, so there is no guarantee of real freedom of expression for anyone, including the journos. Social media sites regularly censor certain material. Case in point: sites that remove, silence, throttle, or outright bury pro-Palestinian content from average users. The sites run by major news organisations and their paymasters publish the same agenda noise online that the put into print and broadcast on air.
The day big money realised the internet was more than an ungoverned backwater for nerds and university students...
[Reading Notes] The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness & Healing in a Toxic Culture - Gabor Mate
These are all quotations from the introduction chapter of the book, and my responses/thoughts thereto.
Page 1
The fact that millions of people share the same vices does not make those vices virtues, the fact that they share so many errors does not make the errors to be truths, and the fact that millions of people share the same forms of mental pathology does not make those people sane.
- Erich Fromm The Sane Society
One wonders about the concept of "common sense" in this context. It's a too often used phrase on the more right-leaning of the populace, as it kindles ideas of the value of the everyday man but never for their real value, only for a superficial and/or false value used as a weapon against anything the right decides is an enemy, a problem. There's a lot of group think in the "common sense" of the "common man". It's a line fed to them to embolden a sense of ego that stops thinking for itself when the slogan appears on the scene.
... industries bank on people's ongoing investment [...] in endless quests ...
Quests that don't serve individual needs, shoving square pegs into round holes trying to force a fit.
Quests that can't solve problems because that would put the purveyors of said quests out of business.
Quests that never look at root causes because solving those issues would eradicate the need for the quests altogether.
The social ills caused by capitalism.
The depths of greed of billionaires and corporations.
In our modern world, at the pinnacle of medical ingenuity and sophistication, we are seeing more and more chronic physical diseases as well as afflictions such as mental illness and addiction.
We eat bad food, deny food to others, don't exercise enough, aren't active enough, we're stuck doing worthless work we hate, we are compelled to commodify our passions, we are chastised for doing things simply for the joy, the method of joy is vilified, even joy is stratified
Our social media culture of constantly watching is breeding people who don't know how to leave others alone
We feel no real purpose.
Page 2
How is it we're not more alarmed, if we notice at all?
We're too overwhelmed by constant information.
Many have been bred to distrust healthcare professionals.
We have been cultured not to trust things like our natural abilities for pattern recognition.
Many have been cultured to see the above as paranoia.
I once heard someone say that distrust of healthcare professionals in the US, and the predilection for home remedies and trend remedies, stems directly from their for-profit healthcare system that forces people into having to seek out alternative options because they have no other choice.
... chronic illness - mental or physical - is to a large extend a function or a feature of the way things are and not a glitch; a consequence of how we live, not a mysterious aberration.
Page 3
The phrase "a toxic culture" in this book's subtitle may suggest things like environmental pollutants [...] there is indeed no shortage of real, physical toxins in our midst. We could also understand "toxic" in its more contemporary pop-psychological sense, as in the spread of negativity, distrust, hostility, and polarization that, no question, typify the present sociopolitical moment.
While it is true that we are sometimes hapless victims/products of our environments - what our parents teach us makes us what we are, for example - there comes a point where we become responsible for how we move forward. "Shame on your parents for what you become. Shame on you if you stay that way." This means that things such as racism are a choice after a certain point.
How easy is it, in a culture where information overload is rampant, critical thought is a dying, mistrusted art, to take "Garbage in. Garbage out." and turn it into "Garbage in. Truth out." "Garbage in. Treasure out."
I am using "toxic culture" to characterize something even broader and more deeply rooted: the entire context of social structures, belief systems, assumptions, and values that surround us and necessarily pervade every aspect of our lives.
So many things that are sold to us as inclusion really aren't. That includes religion, which judges, excludes, others, and only includes by threat and brute force, along with enticement of a promise based on lies and inconsistencies. There is nothing organic about the forced familialness of the workplace, of sororities and fraternities, of forced borders.
Much of the culture we consume has its focus on the negative, on emotional hits that feed our baser instincts, things that bear us down instead of sustain or lift us up, and all for the god of money.
Our concept of well-being must move f4rom the individual to the global in every sense of the word. That is particularly so in the era of globalized capitalism, which, in the words of the cultural historian Morris Berman, has become the "total commercial environment that circumscribes an entire mental world: [...] by its very nature our social and economic culture generates chronic stressors that undermine well-being.
It's been said that human beings can only maintain about 150 human relationships with any kind of quality. More than that, we can't solidly maintain. But that's not the only type of societal well-being, of community. However, it's one way we can build better community, by building more quality groups on the small scale that are easier for us to maintain.
Unfortunately, the demands and constrictions of capitalism prevent us from, very frequently, building even a few quality relationships, even preventing solid family relationship. Capitalism normalises more separation than it does collaboration or cohesion, more than it ever promotes real community. It has forced on us the replacement of love loyalty, familial loyalty, friendship loyalty, and others, with loyalty to the workplace, loyalty to work, loyalty to productivity. Or is it desperation attachment borne of necessity And now, with the rise of influencer culture and much more performative social media, we don't even have our self-improvement as that. We've commodified our joys, and we do more and more for the perusal and approval of others. We curate instead of enjoy. There is less and less of the concept of doing things for the sake of doing them, at least in some quarters. Sometimes, I feel as if certain activities exist not for people to simply enjoy them, but for people to record themselves doing them so they can be viewed by others later. Maybe we should call them clicktivities or viewtivities.
While this is sometimes nominally group-oriented, it's still largely singular and only superficially communal. You film yourself doing something only to share it later to a group of people you'll never meet, instead of finding people to actually do things with.
Are we too info-overloaded to even be able to spend time in community with others? Too overloaded to have it in us to hang out? I've seen an increased amount of social isolation, sometimes borne out of the sort of social exhaustion we experience by work-related interactions.
We have turned previously private or personal activities into things to be shared, commodified, viewed and consumed by others, by strangers: the creation of art, the pursuit of some hobbies, even journalling - to the point where people share images online of their hand-created journal entries. I Remember a character in a TV show (that I can't currently recall) saying something along the lines of a life experience not being considered of any value now unless it's received its requisite number of clicks and likes.
So many things are performative, ever-increasingly so.
Page 4
... deprivations we have more than enough resources to eliminate.
Sometimes I wonder what's more shocking: that we don't eliminate the deprivations, or how gleeful folks are not to. But that may be the greatest illness of all, our lack of humanity, our lack of compassion, our voracious desire to see others suffer, especially when we are living in plenty and comfort ourselves.
I was just watching something about gifted education and the speaker mentioned how they felt that it's mainly just a scam to hoard resources. The kids who get the enrichment are generally children of very specific economic or social classes, and everyone else is shut out. All children should get enrichment. That should be what the education system does. But what the education system (in the West) ends up doing, what it's meant to do in large part, is creating more cogs and grist for the capitalist wheel. The school system creates worker bees, not educated people. Which is very much evidenced by lack of real literacy and critical thinking skills in adults. (Literacy is not just a matter of being able to read the words, it also means understanding them, comprehending context, being able to infer or extrapolate.) We have the resources to do better, but we choose not to, to uphold aspects of supremacy and capitalist culture that separate the haves from the have nots and fight to ensure the divides are never crossed.
rise in chronic conditions and mental health diagnoses
Poor diet, lack of education, decreasing opportunities to escape poverty, decreasing job opportunities, so many hours spent working there's no time for self-care, enrichment, or even rest, no time for relationships, no time or space to grow fresh foods, increased dependence on convenience foods due to time and other obligations, decreased safety even in the home, increased racial tensions increased stressors of other sorts, more demands than the human body or mind can truly handle, multiple existential crises such as climate disaster.
... worse yet, we have become accustomed - or perhaps better to say acculturated - to so much of what plagues us. It has become, for lack of a better word, normal.
There does, in more privileged/Westernised cultures, seem to be an increase in trying to focus on activities and pastimes that focus on what we might term calming, soothing, improving, or self-care activities, or social activities one might do with friends: journalling, crafting, girls' nights centred around fibre arts or movie-watching, businesses that focus on making things, lecture talk series, en masses reading together. Though these are good things, they do seem to sometimes feel like something people are doing so they can be seen doing it (by sharing it on social media later), not something done to be enjoyed.
Uses of the word normal: to be expected.
It is not in these senses that the book's title refers to "normal"; but rather in a more insidious one that, far from helping us progress toward a healthier future, cuts such an endeavour off at the pass.
Outside of the aspects of "normal" related to keeping us safe, the idea of normal seems, in large part, forced. Humans don't always deal well with ambiguity, that which they can't control, and that counts societally as well. The more we are limited, the easier we are to predict and control. If we are limited in choice, the less they are required to provide for us, the fewer variables there are to contend with, and the more readily we come to accept less as the norm: like being forced into the idea that tiny homes are charming in order to have us accept less as the baseline, and not always in a good way.
Are they a good combat to overconsumption? Sure, they can be, but that's a different conversation.
Sometimes I think we so readily become used to things because it's so much less stress. A lot of change means a lot of activity, and that is exhausting.
I watched something recently about why the presenter felt some folks are more adept at living outside religion. She mentioned a few things she felt were necessary in order for people to succeed in a life without it: general security (social supports, healthcare, education), strong culture/social support outside the church (clubs, friendships, etc.), high tolerance for ambiguity (low in needing order/structure, must be okay with the unknown, paradox, chaos), must have an internal meaning-making system (if you aren't given meaning and purpose through another means, you must be able to make it - includes community, moral systems, personal philosophies, etc.)
The more a person's world is out of kilter, the more they cling to anything they can conceive as solid, steady, predictable. Does this play in to the sort of people that strive for/gain power/control? It does play in to theories as to how/why organised religion is used as a method of control, and why those groups work so hard to delegitimise those outside their sphere of influence/control.
Some folks also work very hard to normalise things simply for the purpose of forcing a new baseline on us. Is it a sleight of hand so that we do not realise the machinations and systems that control from behind the scenes?
Page 7
... much of what passes for normal in our society is neither healthy nor natural, and that to meet modern society's criteria for normality is, in many ways, to conform to requirements that are profoundly abnormal in regard to our Nature-given needs - which is to say, unhealthy and harmful on the physiological, mental, and even spiritual levels.
It is not healthy for us to be so isolated, so compacted into cities (for example), to spend so little time outdoors, to be so occupied by wage labour we have no time, room, or energy for rest or creativity, to live in the sort of society that demeans the creative as valueless even though it's such a natural human activity, to spend so much of our time creating monetary value for others and nothing for ourselves, to eat so synthetically, to breathe in toxins (and drink them), to be full of microplastics.
Page 8
... to see much illness not as a cruel twist of fate or some nefarious mystery but rather as an expected and therefore normal consequence of abnormal, unnatural circumstances.
We don't see how society itself impacts and sickens us, the culture in which we live. Or, if we do, we understand it in the wrong way. And when the problems/symptoms are pointed out, the long-built mistrust of institutions like the healthcare profession, and our complete reliance on the capitalist state, won't allow us to see a way out of it. We have also been acculturated to see the individual as almost wholly and solely at fault for our own troubles, even though we rarely ever are. We are at the sae time victims and results of the systems in which we live.
And right after I wrote that I read: The ailing bodies and minds among us would no longer be regarded as expressions of individual pathology but as living alarms directing our attention toward where our society has gone askew.
... our culture's skewed idea of normality is the single biggest impediment to fostering a healthier world.
Which is blatantly obvious if you listen to people's very entrenched and unreasonable negativities about socialism, and their utter inability and unwillingness to imagine anything other than capitalism as a societal base.
The current medical paradigm [...] reduces complex events to their biology, and it separates mind from body, concerning itself almost exclusively with one or the other without appreciating their essential unity.
We've been bred to be such binary or linear thinkers, black and white. We have had our ability to see branches and overarching themes and patterns blunted. We are existing in a time and system where we think, or try to force ourselves to believe, that much of our health (especially in terms of disability) is a matter of will and/or moral failing.
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The false passivity of medical success that lulls us into believing we're making strides in healthier life standards.
There are a seemingly ever-increasing number of anti-vax types and people who won't follow even simple requests for healthcare protocols to help keep others healthy and safe.
Too much diet culture, quack layperson healthcare, and, in some cases, a lot more self-diagnosis due to for-profit healthcare systems.
Did the hyperfocus on individuality cause our increase or distrust of medical experts? The need to believe in the self so assiduously because being wrong would be too distressing? People have a penchant for entrenchment, sometimes stemming from sunk cost, sometimes ego.
... show how our physical and mental health is intricately interwoven with how we feel, what we perceive or believe about ourselves and the world, and the ways that life does or does not satisfy our non-negotiable human needs. Because trauma is a foundational layer of experience in modern life, but one largely ignored or misapprehended.
This goes back to the idea of anything health-related, particularly mental health and/or trauma, being seen as a moral failing if you can't just "get over it". Not being able to pull yourself up by your own mental bootstraps is seen as weak, lazy, not adult, not "manly".
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... the way things are meant or fated to be [...] returning to wholeness [...] healing is not guaranteed, but it is available.
We are not meant to be living the way we do - physically sick, mentally distressed, watching our fellow humans murder for sport, murder for glee. What happened to sicken people so badly that this is where we are?
Religion has relegated healthcare to prayer, eschewing medical science, or even condemning it outright. That is just vile to me.
Another in a long line of responses to people who proudly declare their addict "fatigue", their lack of caring for the disabled, the unhoused, and everyone else who's not keeping up with their norm.
Never, ever complain about the state of this country, and why things are getting worse. It's you, people like you. No empathy, no compassion, no care. One day, it's going to be you. You'll be ill, old, disabled, or simply in need, and you'll wonder why people are indifferent, mean, or even cruel. Work on that before you become completely inhuman.
I think one of the worst aspects of this type of person is that so many of them seem proud of it. Proud of not caring. It's nauseating.
Yet another in a long history of responses to cranky conservatives whose only mode of communication is using things as talking points they don't really care about.
We, as in actual socialists, and people with empathy and compassion, do think about working Canadians. We think about them all the time. All the time. But conservatives sure aren't when they vote for people and parties that gut healthcare, education, and what remains of the social safety net.
Conservative voters only seem to use actual working Canadians as a (flaccid) talking point when they attempt a gotcha (and fail).
I think about fully subsidised healthcare, education all the way to the end of uni, daycare, pharmacare, dental, and care for psych/mental health/cognitive/etc issues.
I think about crown corporations that provide service to the country.
I think about how other nations invest in infrastructure when Canada doesn't.
I think about how other nations work to end homelessness and poverty while Canada doesn't.
I think about keeping people from dropping dead at my feet so they can live another day to improve for their kids.
I think about the fact that not everything is about my personal convenience, and that I can sacrifice a little bit of comfort to keep someone else going.
I also think about how I can say all that without once insulting another person's intellect.
I don't know why this idea appeals to me so much. Someone had wanted to include some chunky things in their journal but they were too chunky, so she added a printout of those items scanned. This is just a bunch of random crap that was sitting on my printer and desk that I used to test out the idea.
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There was a rally this evening hosted by my MPP Robin Lennox and Marit Stiles titled "All in for Ontario". There were signs. I did not take one. I wasn't sure if the event was a town hall or not as the event notification wasn't specific, so I'd prepared something to say on the off chance it was. It wasn't, but I gave Robin's gatekeeper the printed copy of my comments and notes. This is what I'd planned to say:
You'll notice I'm wearing a mask. I wore it not because I love to wear them, I don't. I wore it to show you one of the simplest forms of accessibility provision that anyone can partake in that barely anyone ever offers, requires, or advocates for. On that score, I'm happy to wear it, because one of the biggest disablers to a disabled person is not their disability, it's the society they live in - its lack of caring, lack of empathy and compassion, lack of inclusion, lack of accessibility, lack of even acknowledging the needs of the disabled, or even seeing disabled people as fully realised humans. As frustrating as you think providing accommodation is, I can assure you that having to navigate a world without them is much more frustrating - because sometimes that means we can't.
Disability isn't just a matter of the nature of a person's disability, it is also what a society does to the person, or deliberately doesn't provide for them, that disables them. On that note, does this event even have a Zoom option for those who can't attend in person? Because I saw nothing in the initial email invite nor confirmation. Did anyone even think about setting one up? There are people who can talk at greater length about the deliberate disabling of people a society no longer wants to acknowledge in a much more detailed and eloquent way than I can, but just think about the phrase "the weaker sex" and how it was - and still is - used as a tool to deliberately bar women from full participation. Think about that, the impact it has even to this day, the ease with which we label anyone lacking information as "stupid" when they're simply uninformed, and all of the othering terms used that deliberately undermine people based on their ability, gender, skin colour, or any other method we use to label, divide, other, and marginalise.
Disabled people make up between 25 to 30% of the population of this nation, and that's just the people who know they're disabled or will even acknowledge it. Many people won't because of the stigma we so readily attach to disability in general, and to particular disabilities specifically. Ability is not the default we think it is. Every single human will experience disability of some form or other, be it permanently or temporarily, between cradle and coffin. And even if they don't, someone they care for will.
Disability has been used as an electoral talking point since the dawn of electoral politics, and that is the problem. Disability is not a side quest. It should never be used as someone's vote-getting tactic. Disabled people need actual community, support, allyship, and to be provided what they need to participate in this world as well as they would like to. We need a major shift in outlook here, to one where we acknowledge disability as the default and build our social and physical infrastructures accordingly. We need to stop accepting ableism as de rigueur, treat it the same way we'd like to see racism treated, and shift the focus off the faux moral superiority of those who punch down because they think it'll make them immune to disability.
No one is immune to disability no matter what they do. Disability does not care about your age, gender, sexual orientation, skin colour, religion, economic status, educational level, cultural background, nor anything else. It is the least discriminatory - and most intersectional - social category there is. Whether through birth defect, congenital condition, accident, injury, illness, or age, if disability wants you, it will come for you.
These are some random notes I'd attached to the printed material:
Accessibility. This helps everyone - it helps disabled people, and those who help them. The attitude needs to shift from one where accommodations that exist to make life more accessible for disabled people are no longer seen as things that make life less accessible for others. Someone getting something you don't get, does not mean you're suffering. It just means they aren't.
Work. While there are certainly many negatives regarding gig work, it actually is a better option for people with certain disabilities and illnesses. If we switch how labour works from a time-based to task-based method (like some online work options utilise), that will provide more access to work for people with conditions that prevent them from working a continuous 9-5/40 hr work week. More people could work, assuming there were jobs to do, if the way the work functioned was altered.
The idea of deliberate societal exclusion when it comes to disability is far more insidious than the average person realises. One advocate discusses that you do not have to bring back something like ugly laws (that existed in the US) in order to exclude disabled people, you just have to keep them too poor to participate. We all know that that absolutely holds true in Canada as well, given the dismal funding disabled people are expected to live on.
How poetically sad that, given the content of my comments, that this was randomly left on the podium:
Many years ago, I'd read that the samurai used to name their swords. I've never looked into it further to find out if it's actually true, but it's something I've kept in my mind regardless. Just like I keep in my mind what one sensei once told me about why he keeps using a cheap sword at his rank (though many level up) - because it shows the signs of his life on it. It's funny how things stick with you, impact you, hang on and colour your thinking. I used to think about it a lot, about naming my sword. But, much like all my tattoos, I figured that if a name was going to come, it'd come in its own time, in its own way, and when I am not looking.
I think it hit me today, the (potential) name of my sword. Or, at the very least, what it symbolises.
My sensei was talking to someone demonstrating about showing the (invisible) opponent confidence, regardless of how good or bad you are, or how you feel. That's very much part of the art, that confidence. It's not an aggressive one either. It's the confidence of quiet, of readying, and the readiness.
It was in that moment the (potential) name came to me, as I thought about the quietness, and how, despite how recently I've felt sad about my sword being a quiet one (during cuts), that that same quietness still teaches me lessons and reminds me of so many things. It is, by the by, quiet, my sword. I don't know why it's been making me feel a little blue that it is. But the quietness of the sword, the lessons, are all the ways iaido is quiet, or must be quiet. All the ways in which we avoid noise, the ways we encourage subtlety, silence, and lack of distraction. There is dignity in that, in your personal actions, and in the grace you give the opponent, the respect you give to your budo buddies, the giving of life as you quietly encourage your opponent not to attack, and in the taking of life when a samurai would assist with seppuku.
Some of the definitions of the word suit more than others, but I think they all hold true in some fashion or other:
Something that serves to suppress, check, or eliminate.
Release from life; death.
A final discharge, as of a duty or debt.
Final discharge or acquittance, as from debt or obligation; that which silences claims; (Fig.) rest; death.
A stillness or pause; something that quiets or represses; removal from activity; especially: death.
Final settlement (as of a debt).
Euphemisms for death (based on an analogy between lying in a bed and in a tomb).
A finishing stroke; anything that effectually ends or settles.
Discharge or release from life.
A period of retirement or inactivity.
Removal from activity (especially death).
Something that quiets or represses.
I'll have to sit with this for a while, but the word is quietus.
From the Merriam-Webster website:
In the early 1500s, English speakers adopted the Medieval Latin phrase quietus est (literally "he is quit") as the name for the writ of discharge exempting a baron or knight from payment of a knight's fee to the king. The expression was later shortened to "quietus" and applied to the termination of any debt. William Shakespeare was the first to use "quietus" as a metaphor for the termination of life: "For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, … When he himself might his quietus make / With a bare bodkin?" (Hamlet). The third meaning, which is more influenced by "quiet" than "quit," appeared in the 19th century. It often occurs in the phrase "put the quietus on" (as in, "The bad news put the quietus on their celebration").
In the UK, the voting age has been (or is in the process of being) lowered to 16. Naturally, there's a lot of panic-stricken "adults" trying to undermine youth with all sorts of nonsense regarding lack of information, too much disinformation, voting based on emotion, and even lack of life experience - the last being what was fobbed off on me when I pointed out that adults vote in the same manner this person was trying to denigrate youth for doing. I said:
Adult life experience has not led us in a beneficial direction - colonisation, genocide, neoliberal capitalism, deliberate impoverishment, ableism, sexism, racism, deliberate starvation of vulnerable populations, the lack of punishment of men guilty of rape and paedophilia, marital assault … and that's just for starters.
I started this over on my Bluesky account in February 2025, but wanted to put it here as well. Ordered from most recent first - ish.
A social solution is the provision of robust free-at-point-of-access public transit that includes inter-city commuter services as well as in-city services.
A social solution should be the provision of all healthcare training at all levels at no cost to the student or trainee. This should include the provision of a stipend, and that all such training and education be treated as any apprenticeship.
A social solution should include the creation of a fast track get-up-to-speed education/training program for foreign-trained healthcare workers from all levels, so that they can become licensed to work in Canada. This could include job shadowing, apprenticeships, residencies, etc.
A social solution is creating a social media network that is not dependent on anything in the US, that could start by providing access via your library membership.
A social solution could include the alteration of the average school day, lengthening it so that parents aren't required to pay for before/after care because of work. You could do this by providing homework space, access to activities such as sports/music/etc., all included in the cost of schooling.
Another social solution is the creation of a nationalised grocery chain that is not capitalistically profit-driven. My inner creature wishes we could take the Loblaw corporation away from Galen and his ilk and turn it into a crown corporation, since they have all the infrastructure set up already.
Several side social solutions could be done here that include the preparation of free take-away meals (a la Sikh langar), or sit-in meals if there's a space to do so, donations to school lunch programs, donations to community fridges and food banks, and farmer-oriented/led community projects.
A social solution would be to expropriate empty/abandoned big box stores and malls to use as temporary shelter for the homeless until permanent solutions are found, such as tiny home parks and shipping container buildings.
A social solution would be increased availability of mending and repair group events where you can take things to be fixed by volunteers donating their time to either do the work or show you how to do it yourself. This cuts across both repair of mechanical items as much as it does the mending of clothes.
A social solution would include the alteration of how work is done to make jobs that can be changed into more task-based ones than 40-hours-a-week ones. Task-based and gig based, while currently problematic, would allow for greater flexibility for all, including the disabled and chronically ill.
Along with shifting to a more task-based work style, a social solution could include the implementation of a shorter work week to improve work-life balance, reduce burnout, and provide more work options if the other days still need gaps filled. Hire more people. This has the added advantage of making more work options available to those who are disabled, chronically ill, or caregiving other family members.
Another social solution would be to expropriate abandoned towns to be refit for human use. Though the industries they were built for may be gone, there are other industries and job types (like remote work) that people could do there.
A social solution could involve converting office buildings into housing, particularly housing with more focus on community and third places given the room types and amenities.
A side project to this could be the inclusion of a tool / equipment library where residents and others can borrow tools or use them on site. This reduces spending, waste, and promotes sharing and mutual aid.
Other projects in such a hub could include urban farms, community gardens, and community kitchens to foster community, reduce waste, and help care for those who might need more assistance. Large rural farms could be plot split to allow for smaller growers to rent land they couldn't afford otherwise.
A social solution could involve free eco-conscious public transit to reduce car dependency and emissions, and improve access to jobs, education, and services. This could include more than just buses, like mini neighbourhood-centric transit as well, car pooling, and covered mobility scooters.
A social solution could involve expanding K-12 schooling to something year-round, reducing childcare and scheduling burdens on parents. This does not need to be in the form of classroom schooling only, but be expanded to something activity-based to include life skills, volunteering, practical skills.
A social solution could involve switching to universal design in all constructions, including the retrofit of present ones, so that buildings, transportation, and public spaces are accessible to everyone (or at least as many as can be accommodated). This could include ramps, elevators, good lighting, and tactile surfaces. Accessibility benefits everyone.
I wanted to do this in a journal with a square punch, but I currently lack the latter. The idea is to use a square punch to cut a piece out of something each day that is somehow commemorative, important, interesting, beautiful, or somehow notable in some other way, and glue it into your trashbook or journal.
A new variety store opened up in my neighbourhood last year, and if you made a purchase over a certain amount you got a gift bag of treats. The treats included ice cream, a t-shirt, random other things, and a bottle of pineapple pop (tasty!).
This is the gift bag.
Exciting? Perhaps not. But I like memory keeping, journalling, art, and other creative pursuits.
ALT: black background with embossed silver-coloured stacked cubes
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I spent a lot of time being idle today. Was it a choice? In part. Also partly not. I did the usual round of looking for work and came up dry. The dryness is as usual as the looking for work. You know the job market is bad when even Amazon isn't hiring.
People like to use laziness as an excuse for their negative impressions of things like a basic income, when the opposite has been borne out by countless studies and trials, and even by human nature itself. Humans don't actually like being idle, going without occupation, being bored. But, we've worked ourselves into this pickle of thinking wage labour is the only way to lead a valuable life, that providing even the basics for people will make them shiftless, and trapping people into doing things they loathe because we're terrified of not having enough to survive, nevermind thrive.
Basic income can open the doors for greater independence of the disabled, for people to escape abusive situations, for people to pursue education and training for work they enjoy or find fulfilling, for people to fill volunteer roles that need filling, and for people to be caretakers to their loved ones. And if someone takes that basic income and sits home playing video games all day, content with basics and bothering no one, who cares? The job they'd have been forced to take up is now open to someone else who will want it and do it. Basic income is meant for basics. There will always be those, like myself, who will work because they want something a basic income can't buy.
Today's bus book is Lawrence Lipton's The Holy Barbarisns.
When the barbarians appear on the frontiers of a civilization it is a sign of a crisis in that civilization. If the barbarians come, not with weapons of war but with the songs and icons of peace, it is a sign that the crisis is one of a spiritual nature.
[…]
Nor the politically oriented alienation of the thirties. The present generation has taken note of all these and passed on beyond them to a total rejection of the whole society, and that, in present-day America, means the business civilization.
[…]
this is not just another alienation. It is a deep-going change, a revolution under the ribs.
She says, rhetorically speaking, if he were writing this today would he have put this any differently.
