Motes for Inspiration

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Zara
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Source material time! Read along with The 16th Cavern's audiobook presentation of Beauty and the Beast by Marie le Prince de Beaumont.

http://youtu.be/ZFGmRdNlfGk
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Do all owls look alike by night?

These three did seem to look familiar...

The Owls Three by Isaiah Stephens
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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A 21st century echo of Tunnels philosophy:

Unlearning Civilisation by Boyd Collins
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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We seem to reserve a special rage in this world for those whose ability to be unafraid in pursuit of something new extends beyond our own. We begrudge them their strange friends and strange experiences under the guise that we find those things to be dangerous or unclean. But really we resent those people because their courage reminds us of how common and terrified we feel inside. Bravery is a virtue people revere in dead soldiers and then turn to disparage in someone extending her hand to a weirdo.
~ On Kindness by Cord Jefferson
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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The worldview of the Tunnelfolk:

Todo Lo Sólido Se Desvanece En El Aire
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Heroes protect dignity.

Mo Cheeks and Natalie Gilbert, 2003
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Poems that speak to the myths; realities that speak through the poems.

Liu Xia:

"Empty Chairs"

"Transformed Creatures"
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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We cannot--must not--ever--forget their stories.

"At the Men's Mission" by Joshua Mehigan
A poignant poem.

Re: "Manhattan Bridge Homeless" posted by Sara Heddleston
"Hopefully, these displaced people will find a new place to live...." is a "nice," "normal," "ordinary" response to this situation. "Nice," however, is entirely inadequate.

"From Bad to Good" by Patty de Llosa
In memory of Mama Doe...

"Caste Away: Mass Incarceration and the Hardening of Economic Inequality" by Susan Sered
Of suffering and unpalatable truths, featuring Elizabeth's story.

"Outcast Island" by Susan Sered
Of shelters that do not shelter, featuring Daisy's story.

"Eulogy for Elizabeth" by Susan Sered
Of grief and courage, concluding Elizabeth's story.

Edited to add: "Eulogy for Elizabeth, Update" (10 November 2015) by Susan Sered
Further details from Elizabeth's story, recently revealed.
Last edited by Zara on Tue Dec 15, 2015 3:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Of interest, regarding orphans...

"Lost and Found: The Orphaned Hero in Myth, Folklore, and Fantasy" by Terri Windling
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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A beautiful article...thanks for posting it. :D
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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So: I am about to share something that some readers may find disturbing. It's about sex, consent, and respectful love. It applies these topics to the real world, and to the world of Koslow's fairy tale, and to a part of fandom culture that has emerged from Koslow's fairy tale. Also, the linked material contains strong language and more links to online discussions about sex, sexism, and rape. Be advised.

First, some definitions.

My simplest definition of love = A devoted respect for the abundant well-being of the beloved.

Here, the word "beloved" simply means the person, place, or thing that is being loved. When I express love toward myself, I am the beloved one. When I express love toward my husband, he is the beloved one. When I express love toward the rosebushes that grow around my house, the roses are beloved. When I express love toward the community in which I live, my community as a whole is beloved.

"Devoted" means committed, attached, dedicated, loyal. In some contexts, it also includes a connotation of strong affection.

"Abundant well-being" means the sum total of health, contentment, potential, prosperity, dignity, liberty, harmony, and capability that living organisms instinctively desire and pursue. When you love someone, you interest yourself in their pursuit of peace and happiness. When you love someone, you will extend yourself, making significant efforts to ensure that your beloved one's well-being is as secure and robust as possible. When you love someone, you avoid trespassing against their boundaries, their rights, and their agency. Love promotes an abundance of goodness and beauty. Real love invites reciprocation, but does not guarantee that the person, place, or thing you love will love you in return. Thus, it is generally supposed that a truly loving relationship is one in which the two people involved both express a devoted concern for the abundant well-being of each other, and of their togetherness, their unity in love. I also understand that mutual, shared love expands the influence of love in general, growing and multiplying the benefits of love for the primary individuals as well as the world they inhabit. Toss a love-pebble into a pond, and the ripples affect the surrounding environment to greater or lesser degrees. Love is like that.

Respect? When "respect" is used as a transitive verb:
  1. To feel or show deferential regard for; esteem or admire.
    1. To avoid interfering with or intruding upon.
    2. To avoid violating.
  2. To relate or refer to.
"Respect" as a noun:
  1. A feeling of appreciative, often deferential regard; esteem.
  2. The state of being regarded with honor or esteem.
    1. Consideration or appreciation.
    2. Due regard for something considered important or authoritative.
If I put the words "respectful love" together into the same phrase, it is actually redundant. Love, by my definition, respects the beloved. That's just how love works. But not everyone uses my definition of "love." People will call all kinds of attitudes and behaviors "love" even when those attitudes and behaviors have very little to do with anyone's overall well-being. What this means in everyday life is that when we observe one person who fails to respect another person, the disrespectful party is not (I repeat, NOT) expressing love. They may be expressing all kinds of other emotions or states of mind, even within the context of a usually loving relationship. BUT: if someone does not respect the well-being of another person (or even the well-being of the disrespectful person's own self), they cannot possibly be somehow promoting that well-being. If we do not honor someone's personhood, we are not loving them. Period.

Which brings me to consent, and the issue in our borked-up culture of consensual sex.

A person who engages in interactive sexual activity without their partner's consent is not respecting or loving their partner (and, I would argue, that person is also not respecting or loving himself or herself). A person who attempts to coerce their partner into sexual activity is not respecting or loving anyone. It is not respectful or loving when a person attempts to persuade their partner to engage in sexual activity after the partner has refused, or indicated reluctance, or communicated ambivalence, or decided at any moment along the way to refrain from further sexual activity. Yes = Yes ; No = No. When no explicit answer is given, that Absence of Yes = No. When Maybe appears, Maybe = Maybe, where one's right is always reserved to say Yes or No at any time.

To sum up. Consensual sex, by definition, requires CONSENT. Love respects everyone's right to consent to sex. If someone has NONconsensual sex with someone, it is NOT an act of love. Period.

A perfect analogy from RDPP: Consent: Not actually that complicated

Please read the article before proceeding with this "Motes" post.

Thank you.

What does this have to do with Beauty and the Beast? Specifically, Koslow's B&B?

Well.

I have become convinced that the concept of "romance" in many B&B episodes is badly skewed into appalling dimensions. And the concept of "romance" in many derivative works of fanon is hopelessly anti-loving.

For example:

The opening scene of "Though Lovers Be Lost" does not contain a consensual event.

Nor do the concluding scenes, for that matter, but no one ever claims that at the end of the episode, the protagonist's enemy is in any way "loving" anyone.

The frumious TLBL "exploding roses" is a mask for sexual activity that the story's "Beauty" later describes thus: "We loved." However, if her statement refers to whatever happened to the title lovers in the Season Two / Season Three cave, her assessment violates a very important principle of consensual sex:
RDPP wrote:If they are unconscious, don’t make them tea. Unconscious people don’t want tea and can’t answer the question “do you want tea” because they are unconscious.
Think about that for a moment.

Yeah.

What I find especially creepy about TLBL is that it is, in fact, an ultimate pinnacle of a permanent problem in the title lovers' relationship.

From Pilot to TLBL, the "love" that Catherine Chandler receives from many of her fellow Topsiders is coercive and manipulative, sometimes nonconsensual... AND (although she does make intermittent progress away from this negative pattern during various episodes of the series) the "love" that Catherine frequently expresses is also coercive and manipulative, sometimes nonconsensual. Sometimes her unloving belief or act is simply a failure (or refusal) to respect the person she is supposed to be helping, or even loving. Other times, this disrespect get ratcheted up to astonishing levels of unthinking cruelty. The "love" being promoted via the purported heroine of the tale is not truly love.

In addition to TLBL, I am thinking of episodes like "Arabesque," "The Outsiders," "A Fair and Perfect Knight," "Remember Love," "Ozymandias," "Down to a Sunless Sea," "Promises of Someday," "The Alchemist," "An Impossible Silence," "Masques," "The Beast Within, "No Way Down," "Siege," "Terrible Savior," etc. In addition to Vincent, I am thinking of characters like Edie, Elliot Burch, Joe Maxwell, Brigit O'Donnell, Curtis Jackson, Michael Richmond, and so on.

See? Disturbing. It disturbed the hell out of me when I really started exploring the implications of this story theme. Or character flaw. However one wants to think of it.

I know I'm posing a kind of riddle for folk who are accustomed to approaching this story with a certain set of assumptions in play. What I want to ask is: What happens if you remove the assumption that you can love someone without respecting their personhood at least as much as you respect your own?

Look at the episodes in terms of the pursuit of well-being. Really look. Observe the story with "respect for abundant well-being" as the goal. Not anyone's raw passion or pleasure, not euphoria or "happiness" or violent exhilaration or an emotional high, not Catherine getting her way, not the audience getting its way, not even Vincent getting all he's ever dreamed of. Whose well-being is at stake? Whose well-being gets damaged? Whose well-being benefits? Who is acting out of love, and who is acting out of some other motivation?

I think the non-love in this story is being excused and justified so that someone, whether fictional or factual, can maintain the false belief that it is okay to force tea (or sex, or romance, or cooperation, or submission, or whatever you want to call it) on someone else in the name of love. I also think that uncritically buying the story's premises and imitating it produces a loveless fabrication that can desensitize us to what the online milieu has dubbed "rape culture."

In fanon, the lovelessness is worse than it was in the original series. In some cases, much, much worse. In many stories and conversations, it completely creeps me out to read people's rationalizations for "fixing" Vincent's (or other characters') assumed sexual "reticence"... often denigrating Vincent's (or other characters'; Father comes immediately to mind) loving respect for everyone's (including Catherine's) boundaries... in order to force the relationship to "move forward" at a "better" pace toward some kind of vicarious sexual satisfaction for the audience. This is not a matter of simply removing the original "ban" on physical intimacy that the storytellers wove into the tale, and then leaving the characters to their own devices. This attitude of "acceptable coercion" among some B&B fans espouses exactly what the RDPP post reviles. But this attitude in B&B fandom also picks up the nastiest, ugliest, most dangerous threads that were left dangling from the seams of Koslow's fairy tale, and it spins those threads out along the original trajectory epitomized by TLBL. This attitude defines "happiness"...and "love"... poorly.

The price of this kind of "happily ever after" is not worth paying. Because it's not a real happy ending. It's a deception. A lie to tell ourselves so that we can indulge some needy aspect of our psyches with a detrimental mythology.
RDPP wrote:Whether it’s tea or sex, Consent Is Everything.
And love honors consent.

And finally: Why did I put this link and this argument in my "Motes of Inspiration" thread? Because although the topic is unpleasant, it still inspires me to view in an honest light the elements of the 1980s B&B that brilliantly succeeded and the elements that miserably failed. It inspires me to imagine fresh contributions to the B&B universe that oppose "rape culture" and promote authentic love. And it reminds me to think critically, even counter-culturally, about what romance means and how it happens in fiction and in the real world. And I thought maybe someone else out there might be interested in this frame of reference too.

Besides, the Rockstar Dinosaur Pirate Princess wrote a beautiful article. Everyone should read it.
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Thoughts from an intriguing book that I have borrowed from the public library, written by a psychologist and behavioral economist. The social science experiments that Ariely details throughout his account are fascinating. He offers many important insights into the workings of the human psyche and the stories that we tell ourselves.
Dan Ariely wrote:As we’ve already learned, people don’t need to be corrupt in order to act in problematic and sometimes damaging ways. Perfectly well-meaning people can get tripped up by the quirks of the human mind, make egregious mistakes, and still consider themselves to be good and moral...Yet, as it turns out, biased incentives can—and do—lead even the most upstanding professionals astray.

...

Being human and susceptible to temptation, we all suffer in this regard. When we make complex decisions throughout the day...we repeatedly find ourselves in circumstances that create a tug-of-war between impulse and reason. And when it comes to important decisions (health, marriage, and so on), we experience an even stronger struggle. Ironically, simple, everyday attempts to keep our impulses under control weaken our supply of self-control, thus making us more susceptible to temptation.

...

Once we start violating our own standards (say, with cheating on diets or for monetary incentives), we are much more likely to abandon further attempts to control our behavior—and from that point on there is a good chance that we will succumb to the temptation to further misbehave.

...

As humans, we have slightly more sophisticated means of puffing ourselves up than our animal counterparts. We have the ability to lie—not just to others but also to ourselves. Self-deception is a useful strategy for believing the stories we tell, and if we are successful, it becomes less likely that we will flinch and accidentally signal that we’re anything other than what we pretend to be. I’m hardly endorsing lying as a means of attaining a partner, a job, or anything else. But [we do] succeed in fooling ourselves as we try to fool others.

...

We want explanations for why we behave as we do and for the ways the world around us functions. Even when our feeble explanations have little to do with reality. We’re storytelling creatures by nature, and we tell ourselves story after story until we come up with an explanation that we like and that sounds reasonable enough to believe. And when the story portrays us in a more glowing and positive light, so much the better.

In a commencement speech at Cal Tech in 1974, the physicist Richard Feynman told graduates, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.” As we have seen so far, we human beings are torn by a fundamental conflict—our deeply ingrained propensity to lie to ourselves and to others, and the desire to think of ourselves as good and honest people. So we justify our dishonesty by telling ourselves stories about why our actions are acceptable and sometimes even admirable. Indeed, we’re pretty skilled at pulling the wool over our own eyes.

...

When I think about all of these justifications together, I realize how extensive and expansive our ability to justify is and how prevalent rationalization can be in just about every one of our daily activities. We have an incredible ability to distance ourselves in all kinds of ways from the knowledge that we are breaking the rules, especially when our actions are a few steps removed from causing direct harm to someone else.

...

...when we do something questionable, the act of inviting our friends to join in can help us justify our own questionable behavior. After all, if our friends cross the ethical line with us, won’t that make our action seem more socially acceptable in our own eyes? Going to such lengths to justify our bad behavior might seem over the top, but we often take comfort when our actions fall in line with the social norms of those around us.

...

In many areas of life, we look to others to learn what behaviors are appropriate and inappropriate. Dishonesty may very well be one of the cases where the social norms that define acceptable behavior are not very clear, and the behavior of others...can shape our ideas about what’s right and wrong.
Dan Ariely, The (Honest) Truth About Dishonesty: How We Lie to Everyone—Especially Ourselves, pages 70, 113-114, 130-131, 142, 165-166, 184, 195, 201. New York: HarperCollins, 2012.
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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well.....you lay a lot out for consideration. First...looking at your definitions....you are most correct. But....putting those definitions into Koslow's world of B & B is kind of out of place. Don't forget that it was the end of the '80's...we can look at the story line in that era...not this one. Although...all your definitions are accurate and timeless..(and I agree)....we as a body were not so enlightened as we are now! The "story" is such that it can not continue or be maintained with out the conflict of selfless and selfish. Manipulation and domination .Submission and coersion. We are that as human beings.....self-less and self-ish. As to sex, love or any activity therein, we all start at a beginning by asking someone to join us in what ever activity we have in mind...usually we wait for that person to "decide" they want to join in.... or....we use coercion or pressure or whatever happens to be our weapon of choice.

Very few people stop to think about their own motives for doing or saying a particular thing....they run on how they were raised...by rote....with blinders on to why they behave a certain way or say things a certain way....or even why they feel they way they do about certain things. It takes a stong will to self-analize, to be honest with oneself. To take stock, so to speak...and then make changes.....right?

I happen to love that emotional turmoil we find our lovely lovers embroiled in! Although...not for myself! I keep the emotional turmoils at a minimum in my own life. But to watch and feel with the characters is quite moving....for me....reminds me of my teenage days when I first discovered gothic romances....(you know...the ones that give a "warning" on the back cover?) They were so thrilling!

So....yes...to "truly" love is a deep abiding for the other's well being.....but so few of us are that selfless!
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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Hello Karen!

First thing, I want to say thank you for your strong insights. Everything you say is absolutely true.

There is one thing I would like to attempt to explain a little more. I will respond specifically to your statement about how we should react to a story set in the 1980s, about characters who lived in the 1980s. What you say about approaching history from the present day is also true. And there is even more truth to add on. In addition to remembering that one era can only create art from the raw materials that are available to artists who exist in that particular era, it is also important for a previous generation to be held accountable for an injustice or falsehood that the elder generation perpetuates or even worsens through its art within the cultural environment of the younger generations that will inherit that negativity.

The 1980s (and the 1980s B&B) dealt with the ethics of sex, sexism, racism, ableism, love, emotion, and rationality according to the common language and understanding of the day (and not my personal definitions of love, or 21st century discussions of consensual sex). Yes. True. Koslow's B&B world also tapped into our most ancient stories and philosophies about these issues, and reinterpreted an old and very sexual fairy tale for a new audience. It portrayed the best illustration of real love that it could within a dramatic medium (television) that is generally hostile to presenting accurate examples of love (or any other noble quality) to the public. I contend that "love in its deepest and purest form" (to use Vincent's words) is rare in our everyday experience, yet should be an ever-present goal for everyday people in our everyday lives. Because reaching out for real love, whether we attain our goal of utmost purity or not, mercifully moves us toward the pure love that we desire, toward goodness and beauty. Choosing love rather than unlove, choosing true love rather than a false substitute for love, even in the smallest decision of our day, makes us better people, and the world a better place. One small step at a time.

Under pressure from TV-Land influences, Koslow (et al)'s presentation of romance in B&B violated many tenets of respectful love and many common understandings of manipulation, coercion, and consent that were ancient even in the 1980s. There are moments in the 1980s fairy tale where the characters (and the protagonist, Catherine Chandler, in particular) are praised or rewarded for foolishness or outright cruelty, moments when unlove is applauded as "love," moments that (quite honestly) contradict or exclude the original themes that the female writers of the French fantasy deliberately put into their story, back in their own era, trying to counteract harmful and faulty definitions of love and consent in their own society. It's one way that moral progress from the past is often negated in the present, and the 1980s story definitely fell victim to this blunder at the end of the 20th century. Our vocabulary and philosophies continue to evolve in the 21st century, but humans have been talking (and telling stories) about this stuff for as long as human beings have been talking about anything at all.

So if I point out where an example of true love failed in a work of literature or dramatic art, then I am encouraging myself and others to avoid that particular mistake of the past in our real-life present and future decisions. No one can escape the effects of hindsight in such an undertaking; we all live in the present, not the past. But if we end up building some of our present and future behavior and art on a foundation of wrongness, we can cheat ourselves without knowing what is happening. We can do great harm. And we can end up excusing abominable behavior because a powerful example from the past showed us the wrong road to travel. In this case, a road away from love (as I have defined it), toward suffering and despair. That is the danger I see in B&B and its fandom regarding this issue. As you say, very few people stop to think about their own motives. I post my thoughts and motes for inspiration in the hope that maybe I can do just that: stop and think about my motives in light of new input. I hope that such postings can help someone else out there to do the same thing. Maybe if we start thinking more about motives in stories and in real life, we can gain a more honest and accurate understanding of who we are, and who we truly want to become during our lifetimes. This requires making reflections and judgments about the past using the language, tools, and raw materials available to us in the present.

To be honest, I can no longer talk about the 1980s story exclusively using the 1980s standards or vocabulary because that context is now obsolete. It is gone. It is history. The words mean different things now, and some ideas aren't even used anymore to communicate in public discourse. Most people (me included) don't even accurately remember a lot of the context from the past; we can only view the 1980s through the filter of our present-day lives. However, I can make comparisons and contrasts between an article written recently and a story that was told almost 30 years ago, and try to derive some critical wisdom from the exchange. I could always wander back into documents from the early 20th century, 19th century, 18th century, and so on, to perform similar comparisons and contrasts with other writers who have addressed the issue of romance and consensual sex long before Koslow's B&B ever aired, or RDPP ever wrote her blog post. But the new analogy seemed most relevant to where I am in my thinking about the 1980s show at this point in my personal journey. And even though the two statements (of essay and television series) are separated by decades of calendar time, I believe the process of using a contemporary concrete standard of morality to examine a past example of questionable morality in action is still worth exploring.

Again, thank you for engaging with me about these ideas.
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Re: Motes for Inspiration

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"Yom Kippur 1984" by Adrienne Rich
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