getting woke and SL

[FairreLilette]

34 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

Do you mean inherited trauma? That one is rather tricky. eg. Can We Really Inherit Trauma?  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/health/mind-epigenetics-genes.html

If it's personal trauma you meant, then yes that affects parenting, though exactly how will vary from person to person. It's really hard to generalise either the cause or the remedy for that.

We'll we know alcoholism and addiction are a disease that is inherited.  I don't know much about the scientific aspects of the disease and why it is inherited.  

But trauma can affect every part of the body.  

16 minutes ago, Akane Nacht said:

This?  https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3091114/new-swine-flu-found-china-has-pandemic-potential-researchers-say

if only we could get these viruses to do battle with each other and leave us alone

Yes.  I was just reading more about it.  It says there is a potential from the pigs for this variant of swine flu to jump to humans, but this particular strain hasn't yet is what I read this morning.

Yesterday, when I read it, it painted it far worse.   I thought it was a hoax.  I thought this can't be happening.  However, they need to keep international travel shut for a while because the headline in my news feed this morning reads "Coronavirus is Just Beginning".  

Edited June 30, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Silent Mistwalker]

Vincent

Don McLean

 

Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and grey
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they did not know how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left in sight
On that starry, starry night
You took your life, as lovers often do
But I could have told you, Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in the ragged clothes
The silver thorn, a bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
And how you suffered for your sanity
And how you tried to set them free
They would not listen, they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

[Luna Bliss]

Aunt Leaf

Needing one, I invented her – – –
the great-great-aunt dark as hickory
called Shining-Leaf, or Drifting-Cloud
or The-Beauty-of-the-Night.

Dear aunt, I’d call into the leaves,
and she’d rise up, like an old log in a pool,
and whisper in a language only the two of us knew
the word that meant follow,

and we’d travel
cheerful as birds
out of the dusty town and into the trees
where she would change us both into something quicker – – –
two foxes with black feet,
two snakes green as ribbons,
two shimmering fish – – – and all day we’d travel.

At day’s end she’d leave me back at my own door
with the rest of my family,
who were kind, but solid as wood
and rarely wandered. While she,
old twist of feathers and birch bark,
would walk in circles wide as rain and then
float back

scattering the rags of twilight
on fluttering moth wings;

or she’d slouch from the barn like a gray opossum;

or she’d hang in the milky moonlight
burning like a medallion,

this bone dream, this friend I had to have,
this old woman made out of leaves.

 

– Mary Oliver

[Luna Bliss]

2 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

4 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

The troubles and difficulty in functioning is just what happens when a person undergoes severe trauma.

Do you mean inherited trauma? That one is rather tricky. eg. Can We Really Inherit Trauma?  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/10/health/mind-epigenetics-genes.html

If it's personal trauma you meant, then yes that affects parenting, though exactly how will vary from person to person. It's really hard to generalise either the cause or the remedy for that.

I wasn't referring to studies on how trauma might be passed on via genes or epigenetic triggers, but it's an interesting area of study.
I was referring to how we tend to pass on coping strategies to successive generations, one example being the way in which we deal with stress. After all, life is one stress after another, and how we learn to deal with that stress often determines the quality of our lives.

Take the example of a child crying when a parent, instead of tending to the child and helping them learn ways to deal with whatever stress has befallen them, simply slugs the child across the face in order to make them stop crying. That child's ability to deal with their own stress and pain in the future will most likely be compromised, and they will not be able to help their own children deal with stress in a healthy way either unless they develop better skills through modeling by significant others or through therapy interventions. Not to mention the loss of self-esteem that comes with such abuse, and how feeling bad about oneself and loss of confidence affects the ability to succeed in so many of life's trials.  * Important - am not saying all children who are physically slapped will slap others -- am simply using an example of an inadequate coping strategy to deal with pain in oneself or another to emphasize one way in which adults can fail in teaching coping skills, and there are many. And of course I am speaking generally here in my comments about child development and therapy, so am referring to all people - not only  POC.

Child Developmental Psychology has made great strides in understanding the stages children pass through as they grow into adulthood, and can pinpoint when development was not optimal and so future health is jeopardized.  Treatments have been developed to address damage and help a person, as a child or an adult, who was not able to develop good coping strategies (for example, the ability to handle stress mentioned earlier). And of course, I think it's best if a Native American provides treatment or therapy for an Indigenous person, and is helpful when a Black therapist likewise helps another POC, as there are so many specifics a White therapist might not fully comprehend. It's all too common that a White therapist would not understand  the ongoing abuse POC endure in America, and this must be addressed in the treatment of trauma.

Anyway, I bet psychotherapy is not too big in China? In the past here it wasn't accepted, and people who needed it were stigmatized, but it's more accepted now. Efforts are still underway to fund mental health to the degree we fund physical health.

Edited June 30, 2020 by Luna Bliss

[Luna Bliss]

2 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Hilter studied how the U.S. treated the indigenous..If you notice similarities, that is why.

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow

[Ceka Cianci]

33 minutes ago, Luna Bliss said:

https://www.history.com/news/how-the-nazis-were-inspired-by-jim-crow

That's something isn't it,Jim Crow laws not being enough for him?

It's funny, they teach about Hitler in school, but don't go anywhere near that stuff..

I had a really good 6th grade teacher that would go really in depth with a lot of her subjects.. I'm sure she would have at the very least gotten close to the subject matter..

She was like the honey badger teacher..She didn't give a sh*t if she got in trouble.. She would always say something like..ok now close your books for a minute and let me tell you something not in your book..

I really loved her as a teacher..She was always going off the rails.

 

You would at least think they would teach about him sending anthropologists to the U.S. to try and learn the languages of our code talkers and failing at it..

There were so many languages and such difficult languages, that they went home empty handed..

He knew the impact they had in world war 1.. But since the U.S. knew he had done that, they were not used as much in Europe as they were against the Japanese.

A lot think it was just Navajo, but it was quite a few different peoples.

 

[Pussycat Catnap]

3 hours ago, Ceka Cianci said:

Hilter studied how the U.S. treated the indigenous..If you notice similarities, that is why.

If they've been able to do it, Hitler and Henry Ford would have been porch buddies.

They swapped letters of "inspiration". Talking about how to "finally solve things" and such...

Hitler did in the end, manage to hire IBM to make the counting machines for his death chambers... when war broke out IBM just told IBM Germany to keep working and collecting Hitler's money so they could merge all the profits together, I presume under the notion of "once the US came to it's senses and switched sides over to the 'very fine people' in the Reich...

 

[Ceka Cianci]

1 minute ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

If they've been able to do it, Hitler and Henry Ford would have been porch buddies.

They swapped letters of "inspiration". Talking about how to "finally solve things" and such...

Hitler did in the end, manage to hire IBM to make the counting machines for his death chambers... when war broke out IBM just told IBM Germany to keep working and collecting Hitler's money so they could merge all the profits together, I presume under the notion of "once the US came to it's senses and switched sides over to the 'very fine people' in the Reich...

 

It doesn't surprise me one bit..

[Pussycat Catnap]

16 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

That's something isn't it,Jim Crow laws not being enough for him?

It's funny, they teach about Hitler in school, but don't go anywhere near that stuff..

...

 

You would at least think they would teach about him sending anthropologists to the U.S. to try and learn the languages of our code talkers and failing at it..

They would never want to openly link Hitler to the 'very fine people' that put our system in place and still work to keep it going...

I likewise had two very good teacher. Definitely not fine people; they flipped the narrative a lot for me.

One was a high school teacher that taught history not by names and dates but by asking us why and how. Your grade was dependent on how you answered that. The second was a college level US history professor - in California at least, US history is 2 semesters - before and after... I think roughly 1870 - there was a reason for the odd cut point but I forget it.

The first professor started not at Plymouth Rock, but with a pack of Mexican (called New Spain back then, even though Mexico City was actually re-named to that by Cortez himself) adventurers in the southwest - a Conquistador, some Mestizos, and a (I think free) black man. It was almost a hundred years before Plymouth Rock and these guys went all over what today is the US Southwest. Maybe not them exactly - but another band like them is why when the Anglos got to the Great Plains they found the locals were on horse back and probably first tried to address them with something like "Yo Ese... que pasa homes?" 😉

We spent almost 2 hundred years 'out west' before he rewound things a few decades and looked east. It made me realize how so much of North America was already very familiar with BOTH Europeans and Asians almost a hundred years before the English landed (there is a Filipino community in, I think somewhere near New Orleans, that has been there since the early 1500s when they escaped from New Spain).

- The Spanish basically built a massive trade empire based on sailing up the coast of California and over to Asia, and on the other side using the Gulf of Mexico to go to the Atlantic. So when folks landed at Plymouth Rock, the locals who greeted them probably first thought they were Mexicans (traders from New Spain).

 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Ceka Cianci]

6 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

They would never want to openly link Hitler to the 'very fine people' that put our system in place and still work to keep it going...

I likewise had two very good teacher. Definitely not fine people; they flipped the narrative a lot for me.

One was a high school teacher that taught history not by names and dates but by asking us why and how. Your grade was dependent on how you answered that. The second was a college level US history professor - in California at least, US history is 2 semesters - before and after... I think roughly 1870 - there was a reason for the odd cut point but I forget it.

The first professor started not at Plymouth Rock, but with a pack of Mexican adventurers in the southwest - a Conquistador, some Mestizos, and a (I think free) black man. It was almost a hundred years before Plymouth Rock and these guys went all over what today is the US Southwest. Maybe not them exactly - but another band like them is why when the Anglos got to the Great Plains they found the locals were on horse back and probably first tried to address them with something like "Yo Ese... que pasa homes?" 😉

 

History was always one of my favorite subjects in school..But at the same time, one of the most frustrating.. There were quite a few times where I was like.. Uh, noooo that's not how it went.. That or get an answer wrong when I know I was right and just not win the argument..

hehehehe

[Pussycat Catnap]

7 minutes ago, Ceka Cianci said:

History was always one of my favorite subjects in school..But at the same time, one of the most frustrating.. There were quite a few times where I was like.. Uh, noooo that's not how it went.. That or get an answer wrong when I know I was right and just not win the argument..

hehehehe

My 'history woke' moment was a middle school textbook that had a prelude, not even a full chapter, on pre-Columbian America. It went something like this:

The native people were disease ridden violent savages that regularly brutalized their women and were grateful to be rescued by Christian civilization.

- I read that... in shock... as my classmates ate it up, I didn't know much but I did know that was a lie - even if we were still arguing over whether or not people were here before Columbus got here (an argument I think I got in in 4th grade or so)...

That was the moment that set me on the path to becoming a radical... it took high school to give it focus. In high school another key moment was when the people in charge of approving assembly speakers slipped up and let a member of the Black Panthers through the filters... My "liberal" Berkeley friends were outraged but I sat through his speech and realized that under his anger - ever last thing he stated was something I knew to be a fact from just looking around me at Oakland and my own experiences in Mexican American communities.
- it's a point of eternal frustration to me that solidarity movements there have repeatedly failed; because if black, brown, and red folks sat on the porch for a bit, they'd realize they're all telling the same story. Frankly they should have the Irish with them too on the porch; but modern Irish Americans have been tricked into becoming a 'tool' for the same English that have divided their homeland...

 

Edited June 30, 2020 by Pussycat Catnap

[Ceka Cianci]

9 minutes ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

My 'history woke' moment was a middle school textbook that had a prelude, not even a full chapter, on pre-Columbian America. It went something like this:

The native people were disease ridden violent savages that regularly brutalized their women and were grateful to be rescued by Christian civilization.

- I read that... in shock... as my classmates ate it up, I didn't know much but I did know that was a lie - even if we were still arguing over whether or not people were here before Columbus got here (an argument I think I got in in 4th grade or so)...

That was the moment that set me on the path to becoming a radical... it took high school to give it focus. In high school another key moment was when the people in charge of approving assembly speakers slipped up and let a member of the Black Panthers through the filters... My "liberal" Berkeley friends were outraged but I sat through his speech and realized that under his anger - ever last thing he stated was something I knew to be a fact from just looking around me at Oakland and my own experiences in Mexican American communities.
- it's a point of eternal frustration to me that solidarity movements there have repeatedly failed; because if black, brown, and red folks sat on the porch for a bit, they'd realize they're all telling the same story. Frankly they should have the Irish with them too on the porch...

 

I would always hold by tongue when they would talk about the plains or more east because I really was not as informed as I am now..But if we ever were on the south west.. If i only had a buzzer..

I think a lot of teachers just go through the motions..The ones that do really care, spend the time and get passionate and find the truth and want to teach that..But at the same time I think they catch a lot of flack, or maybe not so much today and years back..

I didn't keep going to school after high school so I don't know what college was like.. I can only imagine..hehehe

I was already working years before that and going to school.. I already had my career going so I just went full time into that after.. All the learning I did myself afterwards just made it seem like school did nothing but skim everything compared to what I would learn after..

 

 

 

[Mollymews]

8 hours ago, FairreLilette said:

Not those who fled World War I Poland, no, they never paid anyone back their lands and property.  My grandmother had one steamer chest on the small side.  They lost everything.  So, I'm speaking of the people who fled to America.  Plus during WWII the whole country of Poland was looted - the Nazi's stole everything.   Restitution is hardly from over.  Russia will not even return our paintings.

you are right, is not easy to do on a personal level. Nation to nation poses a whole bunch of other considerations which can make things even harder

but, even when people fled Europe and had their property confiscated/stolen, some never gave up. I have read/heard lots of stories from people who never gave up. Like one european lady whose family got their paintings first confiscated by the then State, then looted by the invading army of another State. The lady never gave up - I want our stuff back. Which finally happened, she got her family's stuff back about 60 years after it was taken

same with lots of other people.  European governments and Allied governments today returning stuff to their rightful owners

all we can do is persevere. If this generation gets nowhere then maybe the next generation. Never quit, never give up hope

all I can really do in these kinds of conversations is relate my own experiences and stories

like treaty in 1840 signed with the Crown. 4 years later 1844, in protest at treaty abrogations by the Crown adminstration, Hone Heke chopped down the Crown flag pole at Kororareka (the then seat of the Crown administration).  A flag pole which got chopped down  3 more times thereafter, and somebody even tried to blow up the flag pole at Waitangi

flag poles like statues are symbols of power. So knock them over, which is an act that says you (the symbol owner) have no legitimacy here (a US similarity would be Confederate symbols on State land) 

it took until 1972 for a centre-left NZ government to find the will to start thinking of how to resolve matters procedurally. 1975 establish the Waitangi Tribunal to formally begin the process.  Even with this beginning it wasn't easy.  It then took until 1990 for a centre-right NZ government to hear what was being said in words that they could relate too. That the matters before the tribunal are also about property rights. On which realisation, the then Cabinet went aah! we can relate to that

centre-left politicans tend to see things thru a framework of collective human rights.  Whereas centre-right politicians tend to see things thru a framework of individual human rights of which property is a fundamental tenet. This epiphany by a centre-right government broke the political left-right 'race-based' impasse in NZ and led us to where we are today

Edited June 30, 2020 by Mollymews
typ

[Paul Hexem]

History is written by the victor.

[Pussycat Catnap]

-

 

[Akane Nacht]

12 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Child Developmental Psychology has made great strides in understanding the stages children pass through as they grow into adulthood, and can pinpoint when development was not optimal and so future health is jeopardized.  Treatments have been developed to address damage and help a person, as a child or an adult, who was not able to develop good coping strategies (for example, the ability to handle stress mentioned earlier). And of course, I think it's best if a Native American provides treatment or therapy for an Indigenous person, and is helpful when a Black therapist likewise helps another POC, as there are so many specifics a White therapist might not fully comprehend. It's all too common that a White therapist would not understand  the ongoing abuse POC endure in America, and this must be addressed in the treatment of trauma.

I don't have a background in psychology, I just read it for fun. Sounds like you are touching on attachment theory and its relation to minority identity. Problem with studies like that, they tend to use students as test subjects. It would be interesting to see a real world study, that investigates whether and to what extent these 2 are related.

I work with a psychologist, and, while on occasion he has had people wanting to speak to him because he shared their ethnicity, it is very very rare. The majority of clients choose based on their rapport with him as an individual. Our clientele hail from countries all over the world.

 

12 hours ago, Luna Bliss said:

Anyway, I bet psychotherapy is not too big in China? In the past here it wasn't accepted, and people who needed it were stigmatized, but it's more accepted now. Efforts are still underway to fund mental health to the degree we fund physical health.

I don't live in China, so I can't say for sure. I live in Singapore and yes there is still stigma attached to seeking help for mental health issues but it has improved over the last 20 years. 

[Akane Nacht]

2 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

History is written by the victor.

at least til the internet came along.. 🤓

[Mollymews]

2 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

at least til the internet came along.. 🤓

this is true and has fundamentally changed pretty much everything

anybody can publish anything today and gain a mass audience. Mass audiences formerly being reserved to the owners of the earlier means of publishing/communications: print, radio, tv, etc

Edited July 1, 2020 by Mollymews
pub

[Lyssa Greymoon]

7 hours ago, Paul Hexem said:

History is written by the victor.

Apparently the Confederacy won the Civil War.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Apparently the Confederacy won the Civil War.

That's why the flags and statues are being removed? I thought they lost and people finally woke to the fact. Oh wait, I guess your post was sarcasm.

[Lyssa Greymoon]

22 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

That's why the flags and statues are being removed? I thought they lost and people finally woke to the fact. Oh wait, I guess your post was sarcasm.

Sarcasm in the fact that they lost the war but won the peace. Why do those crappy monuments even exist in the first place?

[Love Zhaoying]

2 hours ago, Lyssa Greymoon said:

Why do those crappy monuments even exist in the first place?

Because the "Daughters of the Confederacy" (a women's group) and others lobbied for the statues in the early 1900's for "heritage" reasons - with fake stories presented glorifying the awful people who the statues were of. Totally derailed any proper historical context.   But,the statues were really to preserve some symbols that would recognize white supremacy..even though they lost. 

[FairreLilette]

1 hour ago, Love Zhaoying said:

white supremacy..even though they lost. 

Sad to say, but it's really white protestant supremacy.  If people really want to know the truth.  

About protestants and the Civil War from the internet:

When all was said and done, religion formed the backbone of the South in the Civil War. It affirmed the spirituality of the southern church, and it gave the white South its self-proclaimed sacred identity.

Edited July 1, 2020 by FairreLilette

[Luna Bliss]

10 hours ago, Akane Nacht said:

I don't live in China, so I can't say for sure. I live in Singapore

Ahh, Singapore. I fondly remember a design job in my early days of Second Life where I was hired by a college in Singapore. The school had unusual, more progressive, notions of learning -- believing how and why we learn is as important as what we learn -- and the head of the school and the front person I usually dealt with were delightful. I had such fun tying together nature elements with the learning process (like riding a tour vehicle where becoming submerged in water represented access to subconscious elements involved in the learning process, and a tour vehicle rode through the fire when one had to cope with challenging beliefs no longer true for an individual, and experiencing a kind of 'dark night of the soul' when nothing one knows makes much sense anymore, this process symbolized by participants on the tour vehicle ending up in a black box where nothing could be seen..lol).

Anyway, I'm interested in this "Chinese privilege" you mentioned awhile back, where some were claiming the Chinese in Singapore are privileged and have been influenced by claims of 'white privilege' in the US, and how or why this felt silly to you. I see from a bit of research that Chinese make up 74% in Singapore, and I can see the remainder would also have darker skin, so am wondering how your situation differs from the US.

From a cursory search I found a student research paper from the UK citing there are racial problems there. Is it fairly accurate?
https://www.ukessays.com/essays/sociology/examining-prejudice-and-discrimination-in-singapore-sociology-essay.php

[Luna Bliss]

12 hours ago, Pussycat Catnap said:

-

 

Very informative, and I love the cited poem in the 2nd one by Langston Hughes, and particularly this one verse within it:

O, let America be America again—
The land that never has been yet—
And yet must be—the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine—the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME—
Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.