Atvelonis's recent activity

  1. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
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    Link Parent
    I had meant to convey ontological ambiguity, but I suppose it would be epistemological too. I have long held that I know nothing, and that knowing is itself uncertain or at least subjective. I...

    Epistemologically or ontologically?

    I had meant to convey ontological ambiguity, but I suppose it would be epistemological too. I have long held that I know nothing, and that knowing is itself uncertain or at least subjective.

    I find that "there is that of the [spirit|inner light] within all people." If the spirit or inner light is a sign of divinity, then are the people who encapsulate it themselves, in a sense, light? Not wholly, yet it is always there, and thus to my supposition—do the mortal and divine occupy the same space at the same time, or perhaps an array of spaces at an array of times? After all, the human condition is hardly singular. And if the divine is naturally inert or unconscious as per Spinoza's rendering, then are not these people who can knowingly and consciously enact love on the world—the truest form of spirit—transforming themselves toward the divine in the process? If it is godly to love, and feel love, and be loved; and if it is these human agents experiencing such emotions; then is the human agent not taking on the personified role of the divine? Is it so preposterous to find that one may take up the mantle of spirit, or one's inner light (being part of oneself) thus understood, as to embody love? This being the case, can we ever say for certain what is truly earthly and what is divine?

    These questions are mostly rhetorical. I'm still exploring ideas like this in my own practice.

    Also, would you consider your view to be an apophatic approach to the divine, as is common in other mystical traditions?

    I have not considered that term before. Sure, you can call it partially apophatic. I find that God is not a person exactly and not understood by everyone the same way.

    But I would positively/cataphatically render spirit as love. So far, that is something I have observed. I am less confident about other positive labels, but I have felt them too.

    What would be a pre-modern simulacrum? An idol maybe?

    A simulacrum is an image that represents something else. That could be a map, as in Borges' Exactitude. It could also be an image of God. Baudrillard asks these age-old questions:

    "But what becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is multiplied in simulacra? Does it remain the supreme authority, simply incarnated in images as a visible theology? Or is it volatilized into simulacra which alone deploy their pomp and power of fascination - the visible machinery of icons being substituted for the pure and intelligible Idea of God?"

    I don't have the academic background to produce a historical or sociological analysis of iconography in religion. However, I think the numerous and yet-ongoing holy wars fought over such things speak for themselves. Icons—simulacra—have power because of what they both do and do not represent (divinely); what they both are and are not (terrestrially); and reflexively, apparently being both divine and terrestrial (subjectively), icons themselves act upon our understanding of the world and of God, which may change the world, which may in turn change God, and so on. I find that the concept can be extended infinitely and in virtually any context. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

    So you can think of the hyperreal as the confluence of truth and untruth, or of subject and object, or any other two entities in a duality, such that this duality becomes indecipherable.

    For the record, this is a notoriously obtuse piece of writing, or at least this translation is. I quoted it because it found relevant to your question about whether the earthly and the divine are the same or different. I find them to be both at once and more; i.e. that the role inhabited by an individual (earthly) and that of a deity or other such force (divine) may be taken up by any entity and not just the figure it was prescribed for. This is a very postmodern (properly post-structuralist) thing to believe, hence the Baudrillard. But it is also not so very new at all, hence the Hegel. The latter proposed a relationship between two self-conscious people which can be summarized thusly:

    "A self-consciousness is, or exists, for a self-consciousness, so Hegel says. I am conscious of myself only in a kind of second-person form, that of my consciousness of being known by another embodied consciousness and by my awareness of that other’s knowing me while knowing that I am aware of their knowing me. Right at the outset, self-consciousness is already a two-in-one. The truth of my own certainty of my life as such a life is my being known by another self-consciousness and vice versa. The second-person unity is as real as the first-person separateness. Together, such second-person relations build up into a first-person singular and plural relation, the I that is a We, and the We that is an I, which, so Hegel says, is identical to Geist, spirit, itself. Geist just is self-conscious life in its individual and social formations. That seems to settle it, but it does not. If self-consciousness requires recognition by another self-conscious person, then the other person has to have the authority to bestow that recognition. If all authority is recognized authority, then yet another type of infinite regress gets started, and it seems it can be stopped only by one of the members of the recognitional complex simply having authority, full stop. That itself seems to have no answer, and the way the regress is imagined to have been stopped is that one of them simply claims authority and forces the other to submit to it."

    The bold emphasis is my own and not in the original text. Hegel's "lord–bondsman dialectic" (some translations may use starker terms) provides an example of the inverted power dynamic represented by the intermixed roles of the nominally powerful and the nominally powerless.

    That is all supposed to explain the nature of a person in the context of other people, each of whom have consciousness. The leap that I would make to spiritual matters is substituting those figures in the dialectic with, say, my own mortal self and the concept of the divine in general. I take it that the inner light exists within all people, and that I both recognize and am recognized by it. In this sense, I might abstractly consider it a "self-consciousness" (per Hegel). Though I don't find spirit to be a person, more of a force, I would still be interested in interpreting it as a self-consciousness because I find it to at least mediate the subjective self-consciousnesses of other people (for I find the inner light to exist within them as well as myself). You could say that the Hegelian process of recognition is what intermixes the divine across all people.

    I will note that Hegel speaks quite a bit about spirit and religion properly, and I have not read that part of the book. I will also note that Hegel's conceptualization of sublation, identity, and power dynamics—though perhaps inspirational—is a quite gloomy and domineering matter that isn't exactly how I understand inner light, which I find to be much more loving. But it is still an interesting piece as far as role-reversals are concerned and can nevertheless be interpreted optimistically.

    what is the relationship between Quakers and scripture? Do Quakers believe in Sola scriptura? If you have a sort of inner revelation, how does this relate to scripture?

    There isn't a particular scripture in the kind of Quakerism I practice. The closest we have is the entirely descriptive, rather than prescriptive, Faith and Practice. The Bible also exists, but these days is not the exclusive text people take seriously, religious or otherwise. Because there isn't any single written source of truth, many Quakers don't worry about the authority of scripture in general, though they may still hold some reverence for it.

    Early Quakers were Protestants, but the idea that the inner light exists within everyone (and therefore that anyone can engage directly with the light) supersedes the Bible as the source of spiritual truth. It's fair to say that many Quakers use the Bible and other sources (including non-Christian texts) for spiritual guidance, but sola scriptura seems incompatible with the kind of Quakerism I practice. My community sees value in the personal sights and revelations of all Friends, which is why we engage in unprogrammed worship where anyone can speak if they are so moved. Scripture may very well be the source of those insights. However, as far as spiritual matters are concerned, the idea that words on a page necessarily and unquestionably override someone's lived experience is not something that people in my meeting would be keen on.

    Friends in my meeting share their personal experiences during worship. There is almost no focus on scripture for its own sake. Occasionally, someone may be moved to quote the Bible or sing a round from the Agnus Dei. It is conventional (though not spirit-led) for an elder in my meeting to occasionally read from the Advices in Faith and Practice during worship. But in an unprogrammed worship, no one is sitting there reading scripture. Typically, no one is reading at all because the purpose of communal worship is to commune with the inner light, which is interior (in the soul) and not exterior (in a book), though there is no rule about what physical behavior constitutes worship. If you have a spiritual revelation and are led to speak about it, that would be considered just as divine as any spiritual experience anyone else has had, whether or not they had written it down. It is always welcome.

    There are evangelical Quakers who believe strongly in the authority of the Bible. That is not part of my world. I'm not sure how they reconcile concepts like inner light with such adherence to scripture.

  2. Comment on Can friendships be forced? in ~talk

    Atvelonis
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    What do you define as friendship? What do you define as force? Do you feel that you've had meaningful "organic" friendships before?

    What do you define as friendship?

    What do you define as force?

    Do you feel that you've had meaningful "organic" friendships before?

    11 votes

  3. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I wouldn't be able to offer an academic thesis about spirituality. I can talk about themes: I feel a theme of love. I would identify inner light as being closer to love (the concept) than a deity....

    I wouldn't be able to offer an academic thesis about spirituality. I can talk about themes:

    • I feel a theme of love. I would identify inner light as being closer to love (the concept) than a deity.
    • I feel a theme of subjectivity. My inner light is my understanding of love (expressed, received, extant).
    • I feel a theme of universality. I find that inner light is present in all people, and probably all life in some form, or all things (perhaps even subatomic particles).
    • I feel a theme of [metaphysical] unity. That could be a kind of pantheistic equivalence and/or a panentheistic containment. I don't perceive the spirit to be a personified or anthropomorphic agent which is strictly different than me, but I do find it to exist, hence it exists immanently. Spirit could very well have some unobservable and immaterial existence outside of people/objects who can feel and exhibit love physically, but I can't observe it. If true, that wouldn't change my day-to-day behavior.

    If there is a dichotomy of earthly and divine, I'd speculate that its current state is unknowable or at least non-static. Bendable. To explain, I can attempt to give you a secular answer. I never read the entirety of Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit, but I have interest and belief in concepts of subject/object sublation, dynamic switching or inversion of roles, and translation of immaterial identity, some of which he discussed or alluded to in that text.

    Perhaps in a similar light, Jean Baudrillard wrote in Simulacra and Simulation:

    The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth—it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true. Ecclesiastes

    Of the same order as the impossibility of rediscovering an absolute level of the real, is the impossibility of staging an illusion. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no longer possible. It is the whole political problem of the parody, of hypersimulation or offensive simulation, which is posed here.

    Of course, Jean Baudrillard never wrote that; he wrote in French. And that is not a sentence you will find in any collection of Ecclesiastes. But the trusting reader makes no such observations.

    This treatise on postmodern signification takes greater interest in the implosion of truth or existential consistency in a socio-technological world than in the musings of ancient religion per se. But it speaks to [a|the] nature of our insight into the universe: an unstable impression of present "hyperreality" which I suspect has always existed in some form.

    In essence, in a semiotic context where object and sign can exchange and subvert meaning to the point where ontological origin/destination are indistinguishable, we do not exist in a reality that can be explicitly contrasted with non-reality. But I believe this role-fluidity to be a natural and long-standing element of linguistics and not a modern phenomenon; and because I find that people become communities through language, among other things, I'm comfortable applying that one retroactively where it suits me.

    what, if anything, do Quakers make of Spinoza?

    The immanence of the inner light is a quite widely held belief among Quakers.

    I haven't actually read Spinoza's Ethics and am only superficially familiar with his work in a formal setting. But it feels to me that his ideas have seeped deeply into many people's understandings of Quaker ideals.

    Spinoza's rejection of a human-like and conscious God is probably in line with my beliefs as well as those of many Quakers who are skeptical of traditional Christian representations of the divine, especially younger people—they often have more agnostic tendencies or are indifferent toward scripture. In my circles, I don't hear too many comments about Christ literally walking among us, though some people do refer to Christ by name and as a "lover" and "teacher" and so forth. Among Friends who attend liberal and unprogrammed meetings, and again among young Friends, there is perhaps more emphasis on the light before us (as a piece of and/or within people) than in an overpowering supernatural force which happens to take a human-esque (with personality) or parental aspect as demonstrated in the Bible. Modern beliefs are a little too pessimistic for a lot of folks to accept that an omnipotent God is directly and personally caring for them and everyone else in a world full of problems. That predisposition lends itself toward a more dispersed and/or unconscious understanding of spirit. However, I think Quakers place additional emphasis on mutual/communal love and support in a way that I imagine Spinoza may not specifically comment on. Friends may or may not understand the spirit itself as something they love and which loves them (depends who you ask), but there is universally an emphasis on holding love for each other; channeling love through spirit.

    So in the sense that liberal Quakers don't really have a creed, and thus lacking an enforced "orthodoxy," a particular belief can't really be "heterodox." Faith and Practice is not a Bible. My yearly meeting's issue in fact begins with this quotation from the Elders of Balby (1656) in the foreword:

    "Dearly beloved Friends, these things we do not lay upon you as a rule or form to walk by, but that all with the measure of the light which is pure and holy may be guided, and so in the light walking and abiding, these may be fulfilled in the Spirit—not from the letter, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life."

    Informally, I would be confident in saying that beliefs like mine or Spinoza's would not be considered aberrant in many Quaker meetings. My impression is that many people are attracted to the kind of Quaker meeting I attend in part because it is unlike traditional monotheistic, scripture-based, prescriptive Christianity.

    Apologies for all my qualified remarks; I'm trying not to misrepresent folks here. But I hope this answers your question!

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I speak for myself only and don't wish to imply that my experience of inner light is universal. I welcome additional remarks from @teaearlgraycold and other Quakers. Also, my experience will...

    I speak for myself only and don't wish to imply that my experience of inner light is universal. I welcome additional remarks from @teaearlgraycold and other Quakers. Also, my experience will change over time.

    My sense is that human nature channels Spirit subjectively. Appreciation for what constitutes a "call" or a feeling of inner light is individual, a matter of perception and discretion.

    is this the sort of experience you've had firsthand? Is this some sort of ineffable encounter with the divine, an experience of emotion, or something else?

    Sure, but it is rare for me, and not consistent. Ineffable, yes and no. Latent. Emotional in that it builds on emotions I would have in daily and social life. There's an interior urge to do something: encompassing and hard to ignore. I wouldn't feel that I'm being spoken to, rather it is immanent. Partly physical. Restlessness, shivers, heat, core tension, some sort of acceleration (thought?), deceleration (time?). There is transformation as it churns. Imminence too. Confusing and easy to misidentify or let it slip away, or intentionally squash. For me, this all starts small (uncertainty) and becomes more obvious if I hear/examine it (certainty). It might take me a few seconds or a minute of attention to become unbearable. I agree with the quotation that acting on this feeling brings me an immediate release, but adrenaline simmers a while. Just my personal experience.

    I don't think feelings of inner light have to be rare, but I'm naturally inattentive to that side of myself. My mind drifts constantly, including during meeting. When I'm tuned in, Spirit appears more visible. Sometimes/often I can't bring myself to get anywhere near settled enough in meeting. Other times there are hints right away.

    if you have recommendations on finding such a gathering, I'd be greatly appreciative. I assume these sorts of experiences are primarily if not entirely communal, rather than any sort of individual practice

    I guess you can use the Friends General Conference meeting finder (the list; not the map, which seems to omit... almost every meeting). FGC will lean toward unprogrammed and more progressive groups. But you can probably find this kind of spiritual connection elsewhere. I don't go to programmed meetings, so I can't tell you about them. If you're doing research, Swarthmore recommends a search tool by Tom Hill.

    I don't want to answer you too prescriptively. However, my edition of Faith and Practice states that "Friends find it necessary to be present with others in worship." To me, individual silence is meditative but not necessarily spiritual. I think that I am more passively attuned to Spirit while in community. Being around other people in worship is what unlocks my inward teacher. You can teach yourself through them, and them through yourself. Outside of meeting, I have felt a similar kind of presence at least once, alone, preceding a surreal experience, but that might have been something else. I don't know.

    what, if anything, do Quakers think about movements like the Cathars and the gnostics?

    Quakers believe that any individual can have a direct relationship with the spirit. George Fox listened for "openings." Early Quakers were persecuted, imprisoned, tortured, and killed for their rejection of conventional religious authority and their heretical worship. From what I know of Cathar and Gnostic history (extremely little), they all have that in common.

    I think a decent number of Quakers who go to liberal, unprogrammed meetings have mixed elements of Christian/Buddhist/New Age influence (and more), so their spirituality can sometimes be more pantheistic than explicit and personified in the way it is Biblically. Some Quakers probably have a theology that resembles Cathar or Gnostic dualism. But "Quaker" is such a heterogeneous label that I can't call most theological beliefs universal in the slightest. (I'd also like to clarify that some Quakers aren't strictly theistic to begin with.) Even within a particular meeting, I think that the answer you will find is... mushy.

    Except during vocal ministry Friends may not talk about their interior experiences proactively, but I'm sure some would enjoy a theological discussion at the rise of meeting. Depending on who you ask, they might need a few more sessions to think through your questions. They can be a little bit like Ents in that way. Other Friends would immediately have ten billion things to say to you. Like any group of people, they are all different.

    1 vote

  5. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    I would tend to think that the divine spark and the inward/inner light refer to approximately the same thing. Yes. Meeting for worship as I practice it is conducted in communal silence with the...

    I would tend to think that the divine spark and the inward/inner light refer to approximately the same thing.

    Do Quakers engage in meditative/contemplative/mystical practices to get in touch this inner light?

    Yes. Meeting for worship as I practice it is conducted in communal silence with the aspirational goal of observing the inner light and allowing the Spirit to guide your thought. An unprogrammed meeting in its resting state is literally a silent room (but for the noises of the human condition), which is eerie whether there are five or 75 people there. It is deeply profound, and this profundity is a space for meditation, connection, and revelation. From Robert Barclay (1678):

    "And as many candles lighted, and put in one place, do greatly augment the light and make it more to shine forth; so when many are gathered into the same life, there is more to the glory of God, and his power appears, to the refreshment of each individual, for that he partakes not only of the light and life raised in himself, but in all the rest."

    "As our worship consisted not in words so neither in silences as silence, but in a holy dependence silence necessarily follows in the first place until words can be brought forth which are from God's spirit."

    When Friends feel so moved by the Spirit (feeling that which "arises from the heart rather than the head") during meeting for worship, the suggestion is to break the silence to express their communion with the inner light, that which "manifests itself in the individual as a 'call', described as an uncomfortable quickening or a profound silence before speaking and a sense of relief or release afterward." In practice, this may come in the form of an explanation of a feeling, memory, or experience; a song or quotation; a disconnected and desperate thought; or something else. From John Woolman (1741):

    "Feeling the spring of Divine love opened, and a concern to speak, I said a few words in a meeting, in which I found peace. Being thus humbled and disciplined under the cross, my understanding became more strengthened to distinguish the pure spirit which inwardly moves upon the heart, and which taught me to wait in silence sometimes many weeks together, until I felt that rise which prepares the creature to stand like a trumpet, through which the Lord speaks to his flock...All the faithful are not called to the public ministry; but whoever are, are called to minister of that which they have tasted and handled spiritually."

    I have been to hour-long or two-hour meetings where not a single word was said. Sometimes those are the most profound meetings. I have likewise been to meetings where five or ten people spoke. Sometimes those are deeply moving as well. In general, Friends aspire to leave space between messages so that they can better ponder the meaning of each one. Messages are not meant to be conventional dialogue, because vocal ministry is supposed to be mediated by the Spirit.

    When I began attending meeting regularly, I was given a copy of the book Faith and Practice by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends. It features a very short history, some principles of practice as it is done in this area, and a number of quotations (testimonials) which seek to demonstrate theological and moral principles. Other yearly meetings have their own collections of similar or different practices, but this is the one I know.

    The entire book is available online in the link I provided, though it is nice to have a hard copy. The first section, "Experience and Faith," describes concepts like the inner light in conventional prose, with some quotations from renowned Quakers. The section on "Extracts from the Writings of Friends" contains spiritual and worldly remarks from Quakers across a variety of traditions and time periods. Each subsection is on its own web page, so you have to jump around to read it online, but the content is all there.

    3 votes

  6. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    Religious disagreement brought about multiple different paradigms of Quaker doctrine/practice since George Fox's leadings in the mid-1600s. 19th-century schisms include branches for the "Orthodox"...

    Religious disagreement brought about multiple different paradigms of Quaker doctrine/practice since George Fox's leadings in the mid-1600s. 19th-century schisms include branches for the "Orthodox" (more focused on scripture, specifically the Bible), "Gurneyites" (evangelical influence), and "Hicksites" (theologically more focused on inner light; and in pursuing social movements like abolition), among others.

    I'm associated with the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. Most meetings around here are progressive/universalist and unprogrammed. That is all I'm personally familiar with. Quakers are vaguely divided into ideological conferences, some more formal than others. It sounds like you would want to look for something part of the Friends General Conference (such as PYM), but liberal meetings exist elsewhere too. I don't have enough experience with those groups to comment on their spiritual or political standing in depth.

    Historians have written volumes about these schisms. Other than looking for something programmed/unprogrammed, it's probably more useful to visit meetings near you and see what the vibes are than to try to figure out the theology from afar. There is a German Yearly Meeting which may suit you.

    3 votes

  7. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    I had a few Unitarian Universalist friends in college. I've never attended a service, but their ethics are respectable. I know that some people attend Unitarian services and Quaker meetings and...

    I had a few Unitarian Universalist friends in college. I've never attended a service, but their ethics are respectable. I know that some people attend Unitarian services and Quaker meetings and remain involved in both communities. I think they are pretty compatible.

    My experience with these practices is that specific attitudes/environments can be a little congregation-dependent, so it may be worthwhile to try a few places to see which one feels the most like home. Whatever you decide, I'm sure you'll be able to find community. Good luck on your journey!

    8 votes

  8. Comment on Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship in ~life

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    Thank you for your insightful comment. There's power in finding one's own way into community: guidance without pressure. At my retreat, one of the phrases an elder used was to invite us to orient...

    Thank you for your insightful comment. There's power in finding one's own way into community: guidance without pressure. At my retreat, one of the phrases an elder used was to invite us to orient our thought or physical bodies in a particular way, but not demand anything.

    When I entertain visitors over the weekend, I invite them to join me for meeting. Depending on who it is, I explain more about the silence and the interior contemplation versus the communion and the divine worship, with the understanding that it's low-stakes either way. Universally, those who have tagged along have found meeting to be grounding. Occasionally I have brought Friends who have not attended meeting in years and they've also appreciated the opportunity to return to their roots.

    The interesting thing to me about Quakers is that their environmental perspective is, on the whole, concerned with personal and active change. Friends spoke about successful initiatives by the Earth Quaker Action Team to divest from fossil fuels/invest in greener technology; further about their own individual involvement in brownfield land restoration: soil decontamination, waterway cleanup for mussel habitats, land recognition and preservation work with tribal groups, and so on. And more people in this circle seem to be vegetarian than possibly any other group I interact with.

    I'm better learning how Friends balance their interest in social, environmental, and political justice with personal care. It's so easy to become overwhelmed by it all. When I was studying, my peers and I had a lot of resentment toward society for destroying nature but little visible way to channel that energy, so we were angry and directionless, which was draining. To this end, a Friend shared this touching round from an artist in our area:

    Loosen, loosen, baby
    You don't have to carry
    The weight of the world in your muscles and bones
    Let go, let go, let go

    It's remarkable how inspired one feels around people with sincere and deep-as-the-heart beliefs. It's remarkable how comforted one feels when those people strive to graciously recognize the human experience. It's given me a lot to consider over the next few weeks.

    8 votes

  9. Personal reflections on Quaker retreat, community, and worship

    ~life Text 802 words
    Friends believe in peace, kindness, simplicity, listening, non-violence, emotional understanding, activism, continuous learning and revelation, silence, togetherness, the inner light within all...

    Friends believe in peace, kindness, simplicity, listening, non-violence, emotional understanding, activism, continuous learning and revelation, silence, togetherness, the inner light within all people, silent togetherness, friendship, love, respect for life. You may know Friends as Quakers. Some of your children may attend Friends schools. Friends gather at Meeting for Worship. Meeting (unprogrammed) is quiet and contemplative; individual; punctuated by the voice of spirit (you and I); an opportunity to be heard, and not be judged, and to hear, and to not judge; to connect. It is thoughtful, and beautiful, and somber, and joyous. And unlike anything else in my life.

    I attend meeting in a very old house. It is beautiful and smells of ancient wood, with benches far beyond the years of the bricks around them. History runs deep in such spaces. Death, too: it is a burial ground many generations over, but these days we find it to be a garden both literally and otherwise. For a time, this place had dwindled (so I am told), but now it seems fresh and full of life. We come and we sit and we stand and we speak and we sing. The little ones do their best to keep still, but we know they're moved to run about, for that is the way of things. I don't mind. They are our future.

    I was grateful to have been invited by Friends to a retreat out in the country. The residence was rustic and the setting was scenic, calm, and I had been there once for another purpose. I could tell that it was full of meaning. There was space to adventure. I did so. My cohort, which you might broadly call young adult, does not often have space to reveal ourselves. After so many years of repression, we instinctively put up barriers and we forget what it means to really laugh and feel. The goal of the retreat was to provide an open forum for emotional communion, especially getting in touch with who we were (have been), are, and will be. It was not prescriptive. As time passed, our leaders invited two elders to share in and expand our thought with teachings, music, video, movement, objects. Some examples of tone:

    • "Welcome."
    • "Friend speaks my mind."
    • "That of the spirit is within you and I."
    • "You were once very small; smaller than this seed."
    • "Spirit moves me to vocal ministry."
    • "You are among Friends."
    • "What do you think?"
    • "We love you."

    A few specific words stand out to me from the retreat: "BREATHE" "DELIGHT" "LISTEN" "MUSIC" "VISION" "SMALL" "GROW" "THANK YOU" "HELPING" "FRIEND" "FRIENDS" "WORSHIP" "MUSTARD" "LAUGHTER" "JOY" "COMMUNITY" "REVEALING" "HEART" "SING" "SPACE" "CLEAN" "LIGHT" "STARS" "PEACEFUL" "PASTORAL" "WOODPECKER" "SUPPORT" "GREEN" "IDYLLIC" "DOG" "SOCIAL" "WHOLE" "MELANCHOLY" "INTIMATE" "CRY" "HOLD" "BELIEVE" "SEE" "RENEW" "SHARE" "APPRECIATE."

    It is not very often that you meet a group of strangers and in just a few days leave each other with such bright smiles and quite a few hugs. And it is quite a bit rarer for those hugs to be deep, meaningful embraces. To be realistic, you can only get to know fifteen people so well in a weekend, but the grace in which these Friends held each other eased my reservations more than I expected. I am learning to see the light within other people (and within myself) more clearly. I find this highly instructive as well as reassuring.

    There's talk in our society about the absence of community, especially for young people. Economy, government, technology, culture itself seem to disconnect us. Children are pushed too hard and yet they are left behind. I had opportunity in retreat to think about what it means to be a child and what it means to be an adult. I think everyone in our group had a different and personal takeaway on that matter. I also had opportunity to spend time with people who I would verily call role models. They were (are) kind and considerate and it was a gift to be with them, and to be called Friend (and friend).

    I take great comfort in knowing that I have a path of forward support here. I can see myself continue to nurture my emotional maturity among this community, something I think I've neglected until relatively recently. I am grateful that this is not the final time I will see my new friends. We have our entire lives to live. It can be together. Suddenly, I start to see a fullness in the world that I was missing before.

    That's what I wanted to share. Forgive my esoteric sentences: it's challenging to express the feeling of emotional/internal dialogue in conventional language. I'm more than happy to expand on anything I wrote here. I also welcome your reactions and your own experiences with faith of any kind.

    37 votes

  10. Comment on The mystery of the Chicago Rat Hole in ~arts

    Atvelonis
    Link
    Rat talk. Commentary on the confluence of and divergence between naturally and artificially induced semiotic impressions in the urban landscape. In this case, literally. Vast implications on the...
    • Exemplary

    Rat talk.

    Commentary on the confluence of and divergence between naturally and artificially induced semiotic impressions in the urban landscape. In this case, literally.

    Vast implications on the human experience. Questions arise surrounding the prevalence of false identification in constructed landscapes. Where nature sees squirrels, history sees rats. Where flying rats see salvation, physics sees concrete. Where residents see nuisance, admirers enact ritual meaning; We Who Take The Rat For What It Could Be. Where else might we observe such incongruence?

    The rat impresses itself on the human experience much as the individual walks among grand machines of logic. Overlooked, the product of systemic indifference. And yet in one simple motion the façades crumble as our sunken relief friend, rat-like, produces in its own form an icon which begets infinite thought.

    TO BE: a rat hole in the city. TO BE: an image of a rat, so perceived. TO NOT BE: a squirrel; thus understood. TO BE AND NOT BE: the height of intertangled human-rat experience.

    End rat talk. But please, continue below.

    3 votes

  12. Comment on Lyme disease vaccine: Major test underway. All you need to know. in ~health

    Atvelonis
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    As a kid I had classmates who were in and out of school for months at a time because of Lyme. I remember us all writing "get well soon" cards to them. Beyond the physical symptoms (which were...

    As a kid I had classmates who were in and out of school for months at a time because of Lyme. I remember us all writing "get well soon" cards to them. Beyond the physical symptoms (which were awful), it must have been miserable to be so isolated. That's a hard childhood. And everyone knew about Lyme, literally everyone.

    Chaotic/amusing (in hindsight) anecdote: I developed localized Lyme symptoms in a small town in Scotland, probably from hiking several weeks prior. I had some nasty symptoms (fatigue, joint pain, soreness, bullseye rash), but the world had tunnel vision in the wake of COVID-19, so a negative test gave me false security.

    When I realized my mistake and sought antibiotics, I was shocked by the lack of knowledge and urgency exhibited there. It was unpleasant to spend an entire day convincing miscellaneous hospital staff that:

    1. Lyme disease was... real (??) and also not a minor condition
    2. The chemist cannot provide this particular medication; I need to see a doctor
    3. The NHS refuses to speak with temporary residents; I need to see a real in-person doctor
    4. You can't just send me to another department when you're confused or skeptical
    5. No, I really do not need a UK-based phone number in order to receive an emergency prescription

    The hospital remained resistant, but after a few hours of this I just refused to leave. Not knowing how long I'd had it or how much it had disseminated, I was pretty worried! A physician eventually happened to notice me sitting in an odd place and asked if I needed help, then immediately wrote a prescription. I guess that's the difference between people who swore on a Hippocratic Oath and those who just work in medicine.

    I understand that Scotland didn't have the same problem with Lyme as Massachusetts, but it did have ticks and reported Lyme cases, plus visitors from tick-heavy parts of the world (...like Massachusetts) are hardly rare in the United Kingdom. I wasn't going to die on the spot, but I was still baffled by their indifference.

    That's all to say that a Lyme vaccine will be amazing. I love that modern medicine has brought us so far. I had no idea that there WAS a vaccine that got pulled because of "low demand" (is that really how it works?). I hope this trial succeeds because Lyme is a big deal and needs to be taken seriously.

    19 votes

  13. Comment on UK academic’s Wikipedia project raises profile of women around the world in ~life.women

    Atvelonis
    (edited )
    Link
    This person's username on Wikipedia is Lajmoore if you're interested in her work. I've collaborated with a few users in the past on tangential aspects of similar projects, but the scope of...

    This person's username on Wikipedia is Lajmoore if you're interested in her work. I've collaborated with a few users in the past on tangential aspects of similar projects, but the scope of research done by such focused contributors is tremendously beyond anything I've attempted. Very laudable.

    Wikipedia editing initiatives are called WikiProjects, and there are many pages dedicated to chronicling them (of course, some are not formalized like this). You can find a list of active women-related WikiProjects as well as lists of users who associate with them using Wikipedia's thorough categorization and search system.

    One of the biggest and most data-intensive such WikiProjects is WikiProject Women in Red, which identifies "redlinks" (non-existent pages) about women on the site and systematically creates and expands them. There are also WikiProject Women scientists and others. But it is just as important to identify women not even mentioned on Wikipedia at all, especially in fields where they are overshadowed by men; this work is essential.

    4 votes

  14. Comment on Is fandom.com actually getting worse? in ~tech

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    The core MediaWiki software hasn't changed in a dramatic way. There have been many updates, improvements, and extensions, but MediaWiki in 2023 is pretty similar to MediaWiki in 2008. It's...
    • Exemplary

    The core MediaWiki software hasn't changed in a dramatic way. There have been many updates, improvements, and extensions, but MediaWiki in 2023 is pretty similar to MediaWiki in 2008. It's certainly much more complex than some other content management systems out there, but it was always that way.

    Self-hosting is relatively difficult for the general population and most fan contributors to wikis don't have technical experience. The way the MediaWiki front-end is designed involves few of the skills necessary to operate a website on the back-end. It's essentially just HTML with custom markdown and optional CSS, plus knowing some weird hacks and conventions around the GUI. Generally, the most technical work that wiki administrators do in wiki code itself is writing parser functions (like switch statements) to do useful template calls. Some wikis may have advanced extensions like Semantic MediaWiki and DynamicPageLists; may write custom JavaScript and Lua files; and may integrate with the API to operate bot accounts. However, even for a fairly technically minded team, self-hosting adds additional layers to their routines. To a set of software engineers, self-hosting on MediaWiki is not uniquely challenging. But wiki admins are personally moderating their site, manually reviewing edits and maintaining a style guide, which is tedious and time-consuming. They are also volunteers and most lack project management experience.

    I would argue that the prevalence of WYSIWYG editors in MediaWiki installations (especially Fandom) has attracted a more non-technical editor base over the years. If you edited Wikipedia in 2001, you were a nerd—because everyone on the internet in 2001 was a nerd. Today, the demographics of Wikipedia and Fandom are less programming-centric. When I worked for Fandom, I spent a lot of time helping community leaders with technical tasks. Some of them did not read or write code, including HTML, and struggled with basic computer science concepts. Many of them were also fairly young (in high school) and were not put-together enough to run a business, even a non-profit one. In many communities, the administrative turnover rate is high.

    Having been built specifically for Wikipedia, MediaWiki is fairly hard to monetize, which is why Fandom and other for-profit wiki hosts tend to build on their own software on top. It isn't social in the way casual internet users understand and wiki engagement is nothing like that of Reddit. Many foundational concepts, like user and article talk pages, are unintuitive to people familiar with SMS-style text messaging and article comment secetions. Fandom was running on a MediaWiki fork for many years before recently clearing up their tech debt and separating their custom-built software from the MediaWiki foundation. Even today, their implementation is complex and their business needs are not similar to Wikipedia's.

    Today, the biggest barrier for a wiki community interested in forking from Fandom is that the company's SEO is unbeatable. Even if the entire community were to move to a new platform, Fandom would retain a copy of the existing wiki. Their copy might slowly degrade over time, but not to a point that casual readers would stop using it. Given a choice between two wikis on the same topic, the majority of web traffic cannot consistently 1) realize that there are multiple wikis, and also 2) identify that one has significantly worse content than the other. Powerusers notice, but they aren't representative of the overall market.

    11 votes

  15. Comment on Making a calculator out of monkeys in Bloons Tower Defense 6 in ~games

    Atvelonis
    Link
    Remarkable! Never would have thought to do this with the game. I love his solution for the XOR gate—what a clever emergent mechanic.

    Remarkable! Never would have thought to do this with the game. I love his solution for the XOR gate—what a clever emergent mechanic.

    5 votes

  16. Comment on What should kids know about factory farming? in ~food

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    There's a difference between knowing something cognitively and understanding or feeling it intuitively. Witnessing death and violence toward animals right before you, with all your senses...

    There's a difference between knowing something cognitively and understanding or feeling it intuitively. Witnessing death and violence toward animals right before you, with all your senses viscerally attuned to the act, is very different than being told that it happens elsewhere or even watching a video of it.

    Some literature is successful in demonstrating the grotesqueness of inhumane animal killings, such as Melville's account of the whale's extraordinarily violent, bloody, and drawn-out demise in Moby-Dick, but even such incredible and shocking descriptions are ineffective compared to personal experience.

    I don't believe that most people, children or adults, understand what goes into even a "humane" killing of an animal. They do not know livestock; they know packaged foods at the grocery store, or at most a chunk of meat from the butcher. Whether "humane" or factory farming is demonstrated in person, having any such experience would probably inspire more awareness toward consumption.

    12 votes

  17. Comment on How the ballpoint pen killed cursive in ~humanities.history

    Atvelonis
    Link
    I've always regretted my poor handwriting and admired the very nice handwriting of my mother and father. Now that I think about it, I've probably never held a fountain pen in my life, although I...

    I've always regretted my poor handwriting and admired the very nice handwriting of my mother and father. Now that I think about it, I've probably never held a fountain pen in my life, although I recognize absolutely how uncomfortable cheap ballpoint pens are. I have little reason to write physical notes anymore, though perhaps if I could make my writing truly beautiful, I would find occasions to do it more often.

    4 votes

  18. Comment on A 17th-century classic of Ethiopian philosophy might be a fake. Does it matter, or is that just how philosophy works? in ~humanities

    Atvelonis
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    I was under the impression that strict literary formalism had withered unremarkably in the late 20th century and is now relegated largely to the realm of questionable judicial theories. Online...

    I was under the impression that strict literary formalism had withered unremarkably in the late 20th century and is now relegated largely to the realm of questionable judicial theories.

    Online discourse has revealed more than ever that authorial and social context informs meaning in unforeseen ways, though I think not as predictably or single-mindedly as we might traditionally believe. By extension, both high-level philosophical discourse among academics and real-world textual interpretations (of online messages, of political statements, of calls to violence, and the like) among laypeople have an evolved, postmodern, or really metamodern semantics. We see past some of the axioms of structuralism: that the nature of authenticity itself is subjective, and that the way we individually understand authenticity matters at least as much as whatever we are deciding is authentic or not.

    In this new paradigm of meaning (which, like all postmodernity, is not truly new), we may understand an alleged forgery not for what it is (if it is "authentic") or what it is not (if it is "forged"); but rather as what it is and is not (in the present, to us, both as authentic and as forged), what it was at its time of conception (both supposed dates of creation, if applicable, to the denizens of the past), and what it has been at all times in between. In other words, such a text can inhabit a semantic superposition or a hyperreality where we can choose to integrate all "truths" into our ultimate and ever-expanding pseudo-truth of the universe. Critically, we can take the opportunity to understand different interpretations of the text (which are made differently for all of said reasons) to still contribute to the philosophical corpus. Thus we widen our perspective rather than narrow it.

    While I'm not personally keen on ascribing harmless creative associations to what might be thought of as cultural appropriation—realistically, there is much at stake over credentials in some disciplines; more so things pertinent to non-academics like medicine, though nationalism and national philosophy are certainly pertinent—I'm less interested in fussing over which individual gets credit for which literary achievement and more interested in the material or intellectual impacts on people or the world. I find that academia in general is far too concerned with academic fairness and not so much with the actual significance of appropriation; fonder of reinforcing exclusionary systems for the sake of either meritocracy, procedure, or vindictive experience rather than critically evaluating those systems for what they actually do.

    What is fair is not necessarily what is interesting, useful, or beneficial; and so I find that the key here is not to disregard forgeries like this, nor to dismiss them retroactively as never having been part of "the canon," but rather to create new sub-categories within the canon that account for the complicated nature of interpretation. In short: the world isn't black and white. If such a text is really Ethiopian, then it is so; if it is really Italian, but has been thought for so long to be Ethiopian that it has influenced other work in the latter tradition (or in others, with external understanding of it as Ethiopian), then it is not strictly Italian, is it? It belongs to a third category. It isn't prudent or necessarily possible to erase such traditions; despite popular thinking to the contrary, historians must understand history not as what objectively and certainly happened but rather what they and their predecessors understood to have happened, incorporating all relevant perspectives into that meta-understanding of historiography. Philosophy is no different.

    3 votes

  19. Comment on Moby Dick: Sentences sorted in increasing order of whaleyness in ~books

    Atvelonis
    Link Parent
    Melville meant what he meant back then too. Moby-Dick was critically overlooked in 1850, but it was very much a subversive commentary on culture, industry, purpose, and sexuality. I can't even get...

    Melville meant what he meant back then too. Moby-Dick was critically overlooked in 1850, but it was very much a subversive commentary on culture, industry, purpose, and sexuality. I can't even get through the first chapter without breaking out laughing: Ishmael is such a ridiculous and amazing character.

    9 votes

  20. Comment on Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga | Official trailer in ~movies

    Atvelonis
    Link
    I'm looking forward to this very much. Mad Max: Fury Road is one of my favorites and I'm excited to explore more about Furiosa's past. I'm glad George Miller is still involved! This series is so...

    I'm looking forward to this very much. Mad Max: Fury Road is one of my favorites and I'm excited to explore more about Furiosa's past. I'm glad George Miller is still involved! This series is so interesting because each entry has a completely distinct character/tone. This, I hope, will be a great complement to the rest.

    5 votes