Charles Willeford is best known for his series of novels featuring hardboiled detective Hoke Moseley. The first Hoke Moseley book, Miami Blues (1984), is considered one of its era's most influential works of crime fiction. Film adaptations have been made of three of Willeford's novels: Cockfighter, Miami Blues and The Woman Chaser. According to crime novelist Lawrence Block, "Willeford wrote quirky books about quirky characters and seems to have done so with a magnificent disregard for what anyone else thought."

 

The Belmont Book publishers commissioned "The Machine in Ward Eleven" as a paperback original. The manuscript -- even before it went to press -- had begun to scare the wits out of readers. In this collection of six related works of pulp fiction, Willeford tries his hand at psychological horror, weird fables and twist-ending stories popularized by The Twilight Zone and Alfred Hitchcock.

 

"The most eloquently brainy and exacting pulp fiction ever fabricated!" -- Village Voice

The Prisoner

The Prisoner is a 17-episode British television series first broadcast in the United Kingdom from 29 September 1967 to 1 February 1968.[3] The premiere was 29 September 1967 on ATV Midlands and the last episode first aired on 1 February 1968 on Scottish Television. The world broadcast premiere was on the CTV Television Network in Canada on 5 September 1967. Starring and co-created by Patrick McGoohan, it combined spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory, and psychological drama.[

The series follows a British former secret agent who is abducted and held prisoner in a mysterious coastal village resort where his captors try to find out why he abruptly resigned from his job. Although sold as a thriller in the mould of the previous series starring McGoohan, Danger Man (1960–68) [retitled as "Secret Agent" in the US], the show's combination of 1960s countercultural themes and surreal setting had a far-reaching effect on science fiction/fantasy programming, and on popular culture in general.

 

A TV miniseries remake aired on the U.S. cable channel AMC 15–17 November 2009.

In 2009, Christopher Nolan was widely reported to be considering a film version.

 

Plot summary

 

See also: The Village (The Prisoner) and List of The Prisoner episodes

 

The series follows an unnamed British agent (played by Patrick McGoohan) who abruptly resigns his job, apparently preparing to go on a holiday. While packing his luggage, he is rendered unconscious by knockout gas in his apartment. When he wakes, he finds himself held captive in a mysterious seaside "village" that is isolated from the mainland by mountains and sea. The Village is further secured by numerous monitoring systems and security forces, including a mysterious balloon-like device called Rover that recaptures – or kills – those who attempt escape. The agent encounters the Village's population, hundreds of people from all walks of life and cultures, all seeming to be tranquilly living out their lives. They do not use names but instead are assigned numbers, which give no clue as to any person's status (prisoner or warder). Potential escapees therefore have no idea whom they can and cannot trust. The protagonist is assigned Number Six, but he repeatedly refuses the pretense of his new identity.

 

Number Six is monitored heavily by Number Two, the Village administrator acting as an agent for an unseen "Number One." A variety of techniques are used by Number Two to try to extract information from Number Six, including hallucinogenic drug experiences, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination. All of these are employed not only to find out why Number Six resigned as an agent, but also to extract other dangerous information he gained as a spy. The position of Number Two is filled in on a rotating basis; in some cases, part of a larger plan to confuse Number Six, while other times as a result of failure in interrogating Number Six.

 

Number Six, distrusting of anyone involved with the Village, refuses to co-operate or provide answers. Alone, he struggles with various goals: determining for which side of the iron curtain the Village works if, indeed, it works for any at all, remaining defiant to its imposed authority, concocting his own plans for escape, learning all he can about the Village, and subverting its operation. His schemes lead to the dismissals of the incumbent Number Two on two occasions, despite their failure to facilitate his escape. By the end of the series the administration, becoming desperate for Number Six's knowledge and fearful of his growing influence in the Village, takes drastic measures that threaten the lives of Number Six, Number Two, and the rest of the Village. A major theme of the show is individualism versus collectivism, summarised in one of Number Six's defiant statements: "I will make no deals with you. I've RESIGNED. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, de-briefed, or numbered. My life is my own."

 

Origin

 

The show was created while Patrick McGoohan and George Markstein were working on Danger Man (known as Secret Agent in the U.S.), an espionage show produced by Incorporated Television Company (also called ITC Entertainment). The exact details of who created which aspects of the show are disputed; majority opinion credits McGoohan as the sole creator of the series. However, a disputed co-creator status later was ascribed to Markstein after a series of fan interviews published in the 1980s. The show itself bears no "created by" credit.

 

Some sources indicate McGoohan was the sole or primary creator of the show.[8][9][10] McGoohan stated in a 1977 interview (broadcast as part of a Canadian documentary about The Prisoner called The Prisoner Puzzle) that during the filming of the third season of Danger Man he told Lew Grade, managing director of ITC Entertainment, he wanted to quit working on Danger Man after the filming of the proposed fourth series.[11] Grade was unhappy with the decision, but when McGoohan insisted upon quitting, Grade asked if McGoohan had any other possible projects; McGoohan later pitched The Prisoner. However, in a 1988 article from British Telefantasy magazine Time Screen, McGoohan indicated that he had planned to pitch The Prisoner prior to speaking to Grade.[12] In both accounts, McGoohan pitched the idea orally, rather than having Grade read the proposal in detail, and the two made an oral agreement for the show to be produced by Everyman Films, the production company formed by McGoohan and David Tomblin. In the 1977 account, McGoohan said that Grade approved of the show despite not understanding it, while in the 1988 account Grade expressed clear support for the concept.

 

Other sources, however, credit Markstein, then a script editor for Danger Man, with a significant or even primary portion of the development of the show. For example, Dave Rogers, in the book The Prisoner and Danger Man, said that Markstein claimed to have created the concept first and McGoohan later attempted to take credit for it, though Rogers himself doubted that McGoohan would have wanted or needed to do that.[5] A four-page document, generally agreed to have been written by Markstein, setting out an overview of the series' themes, was published as part of an ITC/ATV press book in 1967. It has usually been accepted that this text originated earlier as a guide for the series' writers.[13] Further doubt has been cast on Markstein's version of events by author Rupert Booth in his biography of McGoohan, titled Not A Number. Booth points out that McGoohan had outlined the themes of The Prisoner in a 1965 interview, long before Markstein's tenure as script editor on the brief fourth season of Danger Man.

 

Part of Markstein's inspiration came from his research into World War II, where he found that some people had been incarcerated in a resort-like prison called Inverlair Lodge.[14] Markstein suggested that Danger Man lead, John Drake (played by McGoohan), could suddenly resign, and be kidnapped and sent to such a location.[14] McGoohan added Markstein's suggestion to material he had been working on, which later became The Prisoner. Furthermore, a 1960 episode of Danger Man, titled "View from the Villa," had exteriors filmed in Portmeirion, a Welsh resort village that struck McGoohan as a good location for future projects.

 

Further inspiration came from a Danger Man episode called "Colony Three," in which Drake infiltrates a spy school in Eastern Europe during the Cold War. The school, in the middle of nowhere, is set up to look like a normal English town in which pupils and instructors mix as in any other normal city, but the instructors are virtual prisoners with little hope of ever leaving. McGoohan also stated that he was influenced by his experience from theatre, including his work in Orson Welles' 1955 play Moby Dick—Rehearsed and the 1962 BBC teleplay The Prisoner by Bridget Boland.[14] McGoohan wrote a forty-page show Bible, which included a "history of the Village, the sort of telephones they used, the sewerage system, what they ate, the transport, the boundaries, a description of the Village, every aspect of it...".[11] McGoohan wrote and directed several episodes, often under pseudonyms.[15]

 

In a 1966 interview for the Los Angeles Times by reporter Robert Musel, McGoohan stated that "John Drake of 'Secret Agent' is gone." Further, McGoohan stated in a 1985 interview that No. 6 is not the same character as John Drake, further adding that he had originally wanted another actor to portray the character.[16] However, other sources indicate that several of the crew members who continued on from Danger Man to work on The Prisoner considered it to be a continuation, and McGoohan was continuing to play the character of John Drake.[12] Furthermore, Rogers states Markstein had wanted the character to be a continuation of Drake, but by doing so would have meant paying royalties to Ralph Smart, creator of Danger Man.

 

The issue has been debated by fans and TV critics, with some stating the two characters are the same, based on similarities in the shows, the characters, a few repeating actors beyond McGoohan, and certain specific connections in various episodes.

 

McGoohan had originally wanted to produce only seven episodes of The Prisoner, but Grade argued more shows were necessary in order for him to successfully sell the series to CBS.[11] The exact number which was agreed to, along with how the series ended, is disputed by different sources.

 

In an August 1967 article, Dorothy Manners reported CBS had asked McGoohan to produce 36 segments but he would agree to produce only 17.[20] According to a 1977 interview, Grade requested 26 episodes, which McGoohan thought would spread the show too thin, but was able to come up with 17 episodes.[11] According to The Prisoner: The Official Companion to the Classic TV Series, however, the series was originally supposed to run longer, but was cancelled, forcing McGoohan to write the final episode in only a few days.[14] Supposed to answer all the questions about the programme, it instead ended up answering none of them, and this kindled the wrath of viewers,[who?] who never forgave McGoohan for this.

 

Filming locations

Panoramic view of the central piazza, Portmeirion Village

The exteriors for the series were primarily filmed in Portmeirion village near Porthmadog, North Wales, the location that partially inspired the show,[21] and where McGoohan had previously filmed locations for Danger Man. At the request of Portmeirion's architect Clough Williams-Ellis, the main location for the series was not disclosed until the opening credits of the last episode.[citation needed] The Village setting was further augmented by liberal use of the backlot at MGM's Borehamwood Studios facility.

 

Additionally, filming of a key sequence of the opening credits, and exterior location filming for three episodes, took place at 1 Buckingham Place in London, which at the time was a private residence and doubled as No. 6's home.[22] The building still exists today as a highlight of Prisoner location tours and currently houses the headquarters of the Royal Warrant Holders Association.[23] The episodes "Many Happy Returns", "The Girl Who Was Death" (the cricket match for which was filmed at Meopham Green in Kent) and "Fall Out" also made use of extensive location shooting in London and other locations.

 

Crew

George Markstein ... Script Editor (13 episodes)

Don Chaffey … Director (4 episodes)

David Tomblin … Director (2 episodes)

Peter Graham Scott … Director (1 episode)

Eric Mival … Music Editor (13 episodes)

Albert Elms ... Musical Director and Composer (14 episodes)

Frank Maher - Fight/stunt coordinator.

 

Alternate ending

 

According to author James Follett, a protégé of Prisoner co-creator George Markstein, Markstein had mapped out an explanation for the Village.[24] In George Markstein's mind, a young John Drake, the lead character in the television series Danger Man, had once submitted a proposal for how to deal with retired secret agents who posed a security risk. Drake's idea was to create a comfortable retirement centre where former agents could live out their final years, enduring firm but unintrusive surveillance.

 

Years later, Drake discovered that his idea had been put into practice, and not as a benign means of retirement, but instead as an interrogation centre and a prison camp. Outraged, Drake staged his own resignation, knowing he would be brought to the Village. He hoped to learn everything he could of how his idea had been implemented, and find a way to destroy it. However, due to the range of nationalities and agents present in the Village, Drake realised he was not sure whose Village he was in – the one brought about by his own people, or by the other side. Drake's conception of the Village would have been the foundation of declaring him to be 'Number One.' However, Markstein's falling out with McGoohan resulted in Markstein's departure, and his story arc was discarded.

 

According to Markstein: "Well, 'Who is No.6?" is no mystery - he was a secret agent called Drake who quit." The "matter of conscience" which motivated his resignation could then easily be interpreted as Drake having had enough top-secret information in his mind--and at his disposal--to start a war, and that, coupled with his long-standing desire to keep the peace, would have meant that he could not even trust his own government with it any longer.

Markstein added: "The Prisoner was going to leave the Village and he was going to have adventures in many parts of the world, but ultimately he would always be a prisoner. By that I don't mean he would always go back to the Village. He would always be a prisoner of his circumstances, his situation, his secret, his background...and 'they' would always be there to ensure that his captivity continues."[25]

 

Opening and closing sequences

 

Main article: Opening and closing sequences of The Prisoner

 

The opening and closing sequences of The Prisoner have become iconic. Cited as "one of the great set-ups of genre drama",[26] the opening sequence establishes the Orwellian and postmodern themes of the series;[27] its high production values have led the opening sequence to be described as more like film than television.

 

Cast

 

Main articles: List of The Prisoner cast members and Characters in The Prisoner

 

Actors who played the same role in more than one episode are:

Patrick McGoohan as The Prisoner / Number Six (17 episodes)

Angelo Muscat as The Butler (14 episodes)

Peter Swanwick as Supervisor (8 episodes)

Leo McKern as Number Two (3 episodes)

Colin Gordon as Number Two (2 episodes)

Denis Shaw as The Shop Keeper (2 episodes)

Fenella Fielding as The Announcer/Telephone Operator (voice only; unseen and uncredited, 6 episodes)

Frank Maher as McGoohan's stand-in and stunt/fight double. (17 episodes—in particular)

 

Home video

 

The first home video editions of The Prisoner appeared in the 1980s. In North America, MPI Home Video released a series of 20 VHS tapes covering the series: one for each of the 17 episodes and three more containing "The Alternate Version of 'The Chimes of Big Ben'", a documentary, and a "best of" retrospective. In the 1990s the first DVD release of the series occurred in North America/Region 1, with A&E Home Video releasing the series in four-episode sets and a full 10-disc "megabox" edition in the early 2000s; A&E subsequently reissued the megabox in a 40th anniversary edition in 2007. The A&E issue included "The Alternate Version of 'The Chimes of Big Ben'" and the MPI-produced documentary (but not the redundant "best of" retrospective) among its limited special features.

 

Numerous editions of The Prisoner were, meanwhile, released in the UK/Region 2 by companies such as Carlton. These editions differed from the Region 1 release in their special features, including one release that included a recently discovered alternative version of "Arrival".

 

The Prisoner: The Complete Series was released on Blu-ray Disc in the United Kingdom on 28 September 2009,[29] following in North America on 27 October.[30] The episodes were restored by Network DVD to create new high-definition masters,[31] of which standard-definition versions were used for The Prisoner: 40th Anniversary Special Edition DVD boxset released in 2007.[32] The US edition, once again by A&E Home Video, includes the first North American release of an alternative edit of "Arrival" (in high definition), as well as "The Alternate Version of 'The Chimes of Big Ben'" from the earlier DVD/VHS releases (in standard definition due to the degraded source material) and assorted documentaries and behind-the-scenes footage.

 

In other media

 

Main article: The Prisoner in other media

 

There have been several spin-offs of The Prisoner in other media, including novels, comic books, fan audios, games, theatre and several attempts to make a movie.

 

Theatrical Production: Magic Number Six

 

In October 2012 Magic Number Six, a one-act play portraying the behind-the-scenes relationship between Patrick McGoohan and Lew Grade before and during the production of The Prisoner debuted in Leicester as part of The Little Theatre's One-Act Festival, running for four performances.[33] Written by playwright Paul Gosling, a graduate of De Montfort University's Cinema and Television History Centre (C.A.T.H.) and directed by Carolos Dandolo, the play was set in Grade's office in 1966-67 and starred Rob Leeson as McGoohan, Colin Woods as Grade and Karen Gordon as Grade's fictional P.A., Miss Cartwright.[34] Following positive fan reaction,[35] the production was performed a further eight times in 2013, in Leicester, Portmeirion and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. At Edfringe the part of Miss Cartwright was shared between Karen Gordon and actress, Tracey Gee. A film screenplay of Magic Number Six is currently in development.

 

Documentaries

Six into One: The Prisoner File (1984, 45 minutes) docudrama presented by Channel 4 after a repeat of the series in the UK. With its central premise to establish a reason why Number 6 resigned, the presentation revolved around a new Number 2 communicating with staff (and Number 1). It reviewed scenes from Danger Man and The Prisoner, incorporated interviews with cast members (including McGoohan) and fans, and addressed the political environment giving rise to the series and McGoohan's heavy workload.

The Prisoner Video Companion (1990, 48 minutes) American production with clips, including a few from Danger Man, and voice-over narration discussing origins, interpretations, meaning, symbolism, etc., in a format modelled on the 1988 Warner book, The Official Prisoner Companion by Matthew White and Jaffer Ali.[37] It was released to DVD in the early 2000s as a bonus feature with A&E's release of The Prisoner series. MPI also issued The Best of The Prisoner, a video of series excerpts.

Don't Knock Yourself Out (2007, 95 minutes) documentary issued as part of Network's 40th Anniversary DVD set, featuring interviews with around 25 cast and crew members. The documentary received a separate DVD release, featuring an extended cut, in November 2007 accompanied by a featurette, "Make Sure It Fits", regarding Eric Mival's music editing for the series.

 

Main article: The Prisoner (2009 miniseries)

 

A remake miniseries, in the works since 2005,[38] premiered on 15 November 2009 on American cable TV channel AMC, made in cooperation with British broadcaster ITV after AMCs original production partner Sky1 had pulled out.[39][40][41] On 25 April 2008, ITV announced that the new series would go into production, and in June 2008, that American actor Jim Caviezel would star in the role of Number 6, with Ian McKellen taking on the role of Number 2 in all six episodes.[42][43][44] In May 2009 the shooting for the new series was completed with significant plot changes from the original television storyline. The new Village is located in a desert tropical area instead of Wales, with location filming taking place in Namibia and South Africa. The six part series premiered in the UK on 17 April 2010.

 

Festival

 

The main character of the series, Number Six, inspired the name of Festival N°6, an art and music festival which takes place each year since 2012 at Portmeirion.

 

Awards and honours

The final episode, "Fall Out", received a Hugo Award nomination for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1969, but lost out to 2001: A Space Odyssey.

In 2002, the series won the Prometheus Hall of Fame Award.

In 2004 and 2007, it was ranked No. 7 on TV Guide's Top Cult Shows Ever.[45]

In 2001, TV Guide listed "Fall Out" as the 55th Greatest TV Episode of All Time.[46]

In 2005, readers of SFX magazine awarded the series fifth place in a poll of British fantasy and science fiction television programs.

A 2006 survey of leading rock and film stars by Uncut magazine ranking films, books, music or TV shows that changed the world, placed The Prisoner at No. 10, the highest for a TV show.

 

выпивка.

Psychological histoires de prédestination imagination stunned,

azioni fantastiche humorous examples empty forweltring bottles cited,

broma risa literary guffaws victis traditiones acerbitate high,

burleske aandacht festivities atmosphère d'or buzzed beyond buzzed,

sjón heimsins butterflies turn to sours fuisce,

druncnian flowers yeux rouges désillusions poured,

prelapsarian stimmen unmediated state dine har utsikt over øynene assume,

idyllicism spesa portentoso poetica values smoked,

isolating ormódnes ferscrifen fantaisie paradise bowl empty,

posthabitis sensualitas fixerunt on artificial wasted valleys below,

heroische zerstörung degenerierenden suche a stanza falls,

wæterung сезонски чежња exhaustion dilating fate,

svefnlaus swoons lostafengnum ár on shifting tears,

olověné smrti mrtvoly nadávat descending hell,

αρχαίων συνθηκών colors brazen déaþscúa night,

ratione pictum another binge experienced,

само бессознательное вампиры купания in замке хладно.

Steve.D.Hammond.

 

British postcard by Santoro Graphics Ltd, London, no. C243.

 

American actor and producer Tom Cruise (1962) became with his charismatic smile the most successful member of Hollywood's Brat Pack, the golden boys and girls of the 1980s. Top Gun (1985) made him an action star, but with his roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988) and Born on the Fourth of July (1989) he proved himself to be an all-round star and excellent actor. During the 1990s, he continued to combine action blockbusters like Mission Impossibe (1996) with highly acclaimed dramas like A Few Good Men (1992), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Magnolia (1999). He received more praise for his roles in Minority Report (2000) and Collateral (2002) and was for years one of the highest paid actors in the world. Although he continued to score major box office hits with the Mission Impossible franchise, his later work was overshadwowed by his outspoken attitude about Scientology which alienated him from many of his viewers.

 

Tom Cruise was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in 1962 in Syracuse, NY. He is the only son of Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. He has three sisters: Marian, Lee Anne De Vette and Cass. In 1974, when Cruise was 12, his parents divorced. Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband. Deeply religious, he enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with the ambition to join the priesthood. He dropped out after one year. At high-school, he was a wrestler until he was sidelined by a knee injury. Soon taking up acting, he found that the activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated his need for attention, while the memorisation aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia. Moving to New York in 1980, he studied drama at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse, in conjunction with the Actors Studio, New School University, New York. He signed with CAA (Creative Artists Agency) and began acting in films. His film debut was a small part in Endless Love (Franco Zeffirelli, 1981), starring Brooke Shields. It was followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps (Harold Becker, 1981), starring George C. Scott and Timothy Hutton. In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders (Francis Ford Coppola, 1983). The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the 'Brat Pack', a group of twenty-something actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early 1980s. Cruise's first big hit was the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (Paul Brickman, 1983), in which he entered film-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. From the outset, he exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences. Cruise played the male lead in the dark fantasy Legend (Ridley Scott, 1985) and the action film Top Gun (Tony Scott, 1986) with Kelly McGillis and Val Kilmer. Top Gun (1986) established Cruise as an action star. However, he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed it up with a solid characterszation of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (Martin Scorsese, 1986), for which co-star Paul Newman earned an Academy Award. In 1988, he played the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in the drama Rain Man (Barry Levinson, 1988). However, Cruise had not yet totally convinced critics he was more than a pretty face while he also starred in Cocktail (Roger Donaldson, 1988), which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. His chance came when he played paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (Oliver Stone, 1989). For his role, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.

 

In 1990 Tom Cruise renounced his devout Catholic beliefs and embraced The Church Of Scientology claiming that Scientology teachings had cured him of the dyslexia that had plagued him all of his life. He was introduced to Scientology by his ex-wife Mimi Rogers. Though Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away (Ron Howard, 1990) with his-then wife Nicole Kidman, A Few Good Men (Rob Reiner, 1992) brought him back into the game. By 1994, the star was undercutting his own leading man image with the role of the slick, dastardly vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire (Neil Jordan, 1994), opposite Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas. Although the author was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice famously reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance, and publicly praised Cruise's portrayal. In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the reboot of Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma, 1996), but it was with his multilayered performance in Jerry Maguire (Cameron Crowe, 1996), that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. For Jerry Maguire, he won another Golden Globe and received his second Oscar nomination. According to IMDb, Cruise is the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the United States: A Few Good Men (1992), the thriller The Firm (Sydney Pollack, 1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996). 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1990). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumour, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers. Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a third Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a loathsome 'sexual prowess' guru in Magnolia (Paul Thomas Anderson, 1999)."

 

In 2000, Tom Cruise scored again when he returned as international agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible II (John Woo, 2000), which proved to be one of the summer blockbusters. Like its predecessor, it was the highest-grossing film of the year, and had a mixed critical reception. He then reteamed with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of the Spanish film Abre los Ojos/Open Your Eyes (Alejandro Amenábar, 1997) titled Vanilla Sky (Cameron Crowe, 2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film receiving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful Sci-Fi chase film Minority Report (Steven Spielberg, 2001), or of the historical epic The Last Samurai (Edward Zwick, 2003). For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the psychological thriller Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004). He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. He teamed up with Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg, 2005). The summer blockbuster was in some ways overshadowed, however, by a cloud of negative publicity. It began, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication to combat her postpartum depression, going so far as to call the psychological science a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. In 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. This behaviour caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthousiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, where he jumped up and down on the couch, professing his love for the newly-Scientologist Holmes. The actor's new public image alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring release of Mission: Impossible III (J.J. Abrams, 2006), his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite this, the film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series, and grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. Cruise moved on to making headlines on the business front, when he and corporate partner Paula Wagner in 2006 officially "took over" the United Artists studio, which was all but completely defunct. One of the first films to be produced by the new United Artists was the tense political thriller Lions for Lambs (Robert Redford, 2007), with Redford, Cruise and Meryl Streep. The film took an earnest and unflinching look at the politics behind the Iraq war but was a commercial disappointment. This was followed by the World War II thriller Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008) with kenneth Branagh and Carice van Houten.

 

Tom Cruise would find a solid footing as the 2010s progressed, with blockbusters like Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (Brad Bird, 2011) and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (Christopher McQuarrie, 2015). He is known for doing many of his own stunts in these films, even exceptionally dangerous ones. The Mission Impossible franchise earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Cruise reteamed with Cameron Diaz in the action-comedy Knight and Day (James Mangold, 2010). He starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot (Christopher McQuarrie, 2012). He also starred in big budget fantasy projects like Oblivion (Joseph Kosinski, 2013) and Edge of Tomorrow (Doug Liman, 2014). Tom Cruised was married three times. His first wife was actress Mimi Rogers, with whom he was married from 1987 till their divorce in 1990. His second marriage with Nicole Kidman from 1990 till 2001. They adopted two children Isabella Jane Cruise (1992) and Connor Antony Cruise (1995). he lived together with Vanilla Sky (2001) co-star Penélope Cruz from 2001 - 2004. His 2006 marriage to Katie Holmes ended in a divorce in 2012. They have one daughter, Surie Cruise (2006). Recently, Cruise returned on the screen as Ethan Hunt in the sixth installment of the Mission Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Fallout (Christopher McQuarrie, 2018). In 2020, he will also return as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2020), in which Val Kilmer will also reprise his role from the first film.

 

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

many psychological issues emerge from the fact the illuminator, or lightner [as he refers to himself in third person], is nothing but a gadget, a some-thing created to develop a specific function replacing high technology.

SBT Psychological Test -

We all have differences in perception because our cultural backgrounds shaped unconsciously our way of looking at things. What do you see on this pair of mating moth? Concentrate for 10 seconds and say an alphabet from the twenty-six letters. Do not continue to read until you’ve given an answer.

 

What is interpreted by the brain sheds light also on the inner heart. In this assessment, a great majority will spell the alphabet “H” from their standpoint. The typical traits of men belonging to this group are handsome, honest, hard-working and homely. Ladies are hypnotic, helpful, harmonious and hygienic. To put it in a nutshell, people in this league are happy folks enjoying a healthy mind. You tend to pick up the shape, size and color of laughter easily. How can this possibly be true? Are you one who will walk with a joyous spring even when you couldn’t find work for 6 months? Do you always remember to forget the bad experience and troubles that have passed away? Bingo! To the cheerful, Brussels sprouts and lollypops taste the same because their high-spirited outlook transforms whatever bitter into sweet. For those who are perpetually teary, it takes no more than three inches to drown in the pool of blues. Congrats, you probably don’t know that.

 

A lesser number will observe “I” in the minority crew. Regardless of gender, those belonging to the second league are deemed by friends as icy, insecure, indifferent and impassive. They are wrapped up with a high level of self-centeredness where everything is about I, I and I all the time. Is the secret password to your email set at 12-12-112? I want to mount up 99 faves, want to hit a million views, want-want to amass a truckload of comments to prove I’m the best) That’s it! Have you, on more than one occasion, been told that you talk about yourself from start to finish until the caterpillars in your stomach develop wings and fly? Have you ever, with eulogy eyes, deride the pathetic crowd and believe you are the only reason the sun shines? Here’s the harsh truth that will make you a better being. You are not a special snowflake that deserves to be framed and admired periodically. For a multitude of reasons, centering on the importance of self will lead to the destruction of self. Get over yourself. Take a minute and listen to my proposal. Put your enlarged ego in a helium balloon today and watch it cease to exist in the consuming sky.

 

What if you are unable to make out anything from the picture of procreation? Regrettably, you fit into the third kind known as the emotionless. One who is numb to whatsoever naturally will not know how to feel, can barely sleep, never cry, and believe it or not, are immune to fresh air. If you fail to remember what made you smile… if you fail to see what makes life worthwhile… when nothing has meaning… drop everything this moment and hug a tree. The healing greens of nature, the wonderment of the birds and the bees in romance are the only cure for the stony-eyed with blank stare, I can vouch for that.

 

Thank you for taking the time to read. I hope you have enjoyed the mental health test I prepared for you tonight :-)

SARAJEVO Ode to Joy, Opus: Children of War,

Mirza Ajanovic POETIC Photography,

SARAJEVO WAR Gateway of Hell,

Grand OPUS; Sarajevo City of Light,

BOSNIA in Tragic WAR 1992-95,

POETIC Beauty and Strength of the Human Spirit,

During the years of terror cast upon Bosnia and my city of Sarajevo, photography remained my only medium of artistic expression. My painting conditions were nonexistent, (shortage of materials, time and peace). My photographs were captured while walking between steps. Each step representing life or death… In this town of sorrows, agony surrounded by walls of hatred and evil, I encountered the most extraordinary beings in this world. They are genuine people, without hatred; people who survive inside the walls of a besieged city, without electricity, fuel, food, water, etc. Sarajevo became the massacred city where every new day is awaited as a miracle; awaited with patience and disbelief that you are still alive. There was a light that continued to glow from this destroyed city and its people; they had not lost their spirit. Exhibitions and concerts were still being attended by people who shed the tears of happiness, knowing that they couldn’t kill the art. A horrifying beauty was born.

Intensely preoccupied with exploring light at edge of shadow,

Picture is based on light and darkness counterpoints,

With elements of Chiaroscuro,

Observation of physical and psychological reality,

Acutely observed realism brought a new level of emotional intensity,

Strong, dramatic expression,

Perception beyond Appearances,

Symbolism, POETIC TransRealism;

Perception beyond the Veil, including the veil of religion;

‘The true light came to the world and resided in the world,

And the world did not understand it,’

MIRZA AJANOVIC Fine ART Photography,

The remnants of the storm, both literal and psychological, remain with us. Taken with Fujifilm X-T50 and Brightin Star 35mm f0.95 at late dusk.

talk show: an oil painting by jaisini by yustas kotz-gottlieb

Talk Show is a painting that proves the idea that we live in a post-modern world with the apparent loss of any reasonable hope for alternative to the present. In Talk Show, immediacy unites with immortality, trivial with profound. In our days the long myth of immortality is replaced by the myth of immediacy. The substitution of the trivial for the profound for many was a loss, rather than a gain, although, the will to be immediate speaks more directly to our lives. Jaisini unites the two principles, searching for unique ways that can create this double effect of a physical lowland, united with the philosophical purity of mind. Talk Show has the significance of biblical wisdom based on a street scene. In Talk Show, Jaisini pictures not the dark side’ of people, but the substantial one, when sex became ‘the lyricism of the masses’. The picture shows that we live in a more cynical, realistic time by means of parody. The new cynicism is the old one. The work is timeless and can relate to anyone. Talk Show has the analogous environment as in the work called Show Time; the crowd representatives and the image that centers the crowd’s attention. In Talk Show, it is the two dogs in an intercourse that attracts the attention of different people of the crowd. In the painting we can clearly see the interlocked line of composition. This line flows freely as an unconscious line. The absence of an ‘end’ in Jaisini’s composition may be the artist’s revolt against the end of ideology and the general failures of social theory, obsessed with ‘ends’, with visions of finished worlds and finalities. Modern society was once based on a principle of expansion, but having reached a certain ‘critical mass’ it has begun to recoil. Is this why Jaisini creates his secluded line composition? What we are witnessing in the domain of the social is a kind of inverse explosion. The artist avoids breaking the line because any attempt to save the principle of expansion is not ‘archaic’ and regressive. The principle of enclosure is the radical inquiry for continuance. Jaisini has found his way to avoid the end-state. His closed circle of composition creates a new visual code that guarantees the ‘addressee,’ a recognizable meaning. The Talk Show mockery reflects the contemporary condition of Byzantizm. It could be mentioned here that evenin Cicero’s time, the ancient world was becoming stupid. Talk Show may symbolize the mass communication as an enclosing circle connecting mass culture and its audiences of ‘mass conformist,’ the picture’s title can be attributed to the fact that consequently television, along with the rest of mass culture, has become an undreamed-of medium of psychological control. We become part of mass communication circuits, part of a realm and era of connection, contact, feedback, an era that is ‘obscene,’ yet lunar cold. The reason why the artist prescribes the emerald color to his painting may be to symbolize the coldness of the contemporary world of communications which contacts penetrate without resistance. In the picture, we see the dogs’ intercourse as the critique of the talk show. Copyright © 2014 Yustas Kotz-Gottlieb All Rights Reserved

Talk Show on Spark website, circa 1999

 

There are two characters in Marvel Comics named Blackout. The second and more known character is a vampire villain from Ghost Rider.

 

This Blackout is the first, barely known, villain from Nova.

 

Though never really featured or expanded as a character there’s good story material. Blackout can create and control solid darkness, and has psychological issues, and a connection with the Darkforce.

 

Background

 

Real Name: Marcus Daniels.

 

Former aliases: Bob Hoffstetter.

 

Known Relatives: None.

 

Group Affiliation: Masters of Evil, Army of Evil.

 

Base Of Operations: New York.

 

Height: 5’10” (1.78m).

 

Weight: 180 lbs. (82 Kg.).

 

Eyes: Grey. Hair: Brown.

 

Powers and Abilities

Blackout can open portals into the DarkforceJet-black, solid energy from another universe. Dimension. And he can control the Darkforce matter which comes out of it, for such effects as forming it into solid objects. 

 

These are frictionless, electrically conductive, self-sealing, can float in the air and have a molasses-like inner consistency.

 

Blackout can project solid darkness as blasts of energy.

 

He can create black disks underfoot, which let him walk through the air.

 

He can use it as a cloud of darkness. Oddly, he’s also able to create breathable air within if necessary.

 

He can use the coldness of it to create ice around targets. During his original appearance, there was an emphasis on how cold his dark energy was.

 

He can lace it into clouds, allowing him to control the weather.

 

The portals also allow him access to the Darkforce Dimension. This allows him to travel vast distances (such as from the Earth to the Moon), or to banish his enemies there.

 

Strays

 

When he first appeared, he believed his powers to be some form of light control. Thus, when he banished people to the Darkforce Dimension he believed he was turning them into black light, their atoms merging with the colour spectrum.

 

At this point his energy blasts could be made invisible. Though the colouring of the panel is confusing – it may just be that the blasts were shot within a darkness cloud.

 

In 2014, Blackout seemed to absorb within his body Electro (Maxwell Dillon)’s charge. This left Dillon depowered for a time.

 

There have been two differing accounts of the events that gave Daniels his powers. Both were related by Daniels.

 

Given his deteriorating mental state the truth could be one of these, parts of each, or neither.

 

What is known for certain is that Marcus Daniels was a laboratory assistant to physicist Dr. Abner Croit.

 

First account

 

Croit was working on a device to harness the power of a black star. When the honest Daniels discovered Croit was defrauding his government backers, he went straight to the police.

 

Unfortunately Croit framed Daniels. Daniels later claimed that Croit had bribed the DA and the judge, but this was during his paranoid period, so this was unsubstantiated.

 

The assistant was threatened with prison if he didn’t act as a guinea pig for Croit’s experiments. Daniels reluctantly agreed.

 

Exposure to energies from the black star changed Daniels. For three days he had to remain isolated, the energies proving dangerous to anyone around him. Unwilling to let Croit control his power, Daniels fled the laboratory.

 

Second account

 

Croit was a kindly man who took pity on the unfortunate Daniels. He offered him a job as an assistant, and always helped him out of troubles with the law.

 

In this origin Croit was building an experimental device to try using another dimensionOther realms of existence that are not our universe. as a power source. The dimension in question was the Darkforce Dimension. However, a lab accident empowered Daniels as a conduit to this realm.

 

Croit worried about the damage this could do to Daniels, and tried to cure him. But Daniels decided he liked his newfound power. Fed up with what he saw as Croit’s condescension, he fled.

 

Whatever the truth, Daniels eventually realized his powers were becoming uncontrollable.

 

Adopting the Blackout identity, he returned to confront Croit. His goal was to take the stabilizer which would allow him to control the energies.

 

On his way to Croit’s laboratory he spotted Nova (Richard Rider) flying over Manhattan. In his growing paranoia, Daniels believed the hero was searching for him.

 

He attacked Nova. After realising his error, he left the young hero in a block of sticky Darkforce, continuing on to Croit’s laboratory.

 

Breaking into the lab, he retrieved the stabilizer and confronted Croit and his new assistant. He “merged their atoms with the colour spectrum” (actually banishing them to the Darkforce Dimension).

 

He then used his now-controlled powers to create unnaturally harsh weather over New York.

 

Blackout was discovered by Nova, and the two fought again. When the stabilizer was destroyed in the battle, Blackout again lost control of his powers. He found himself following Croit.

 

Project: PEGASUS

 

The stabilizer ended up at Project: PEGASUS. Vibrations from an earthquake reactivated the stabilizer. Then the proximity of Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau)’s energy form passing nearby triggered it, allowing Blackout to return.

 

Fellow prisoner, Moonstone (Karla Sofen), convinced him to free her, plus other villains imprisoned there, Electro (Maxwell Dillon) and Rhino (Aleksei Sytsevich).

 

They were soon confronted by the Avengers and Spider-Man (Peter Parker). After causing damage to the Project’s nuclear reactor, Blackout and Moonstone escaped while the Avengers were busy averting a meltdown.

 

Moonstone took advantage of their freedom to work her way into Daniels’ confidence. She offered him therapy to overcome his problems, but actually manipulated him to become reliant on her.

 

However, they were soon found by the Avengers. When Moonstone ordered Blackout to trap the Avengers within the Darkforce Dimension, he instead trapped himself and Moonstone.

 

The pair next appeared on the Moon. Moonstone was hoping to find another of the stones which empowered her. They hadn’t expected to find it inhabited, so were surprised to find the Inhumans’ city.

 

The Inhumans were equally surprised when a cloud of darkness (which provided the pair with oxygen, as well as concealing them) appeared near their home.

 

Unable to penetrate the cloud, the Inhumans sought aid from Dazzler. Working with Black Bolt, Dazzler managed to pierce Blackout’s darkness. Blackout and Moonstone fought back but were defeated, and returned to the custody of Project: PEGASUS.

 

Masters of Evil

 

When Moonstone was recruited into Baron Helmut Zemo’s Masters of Evil, she asked for Blackout to also be released. She claimed that he could be instrumental in countering Captain Marvel (Monica Rambeau), the most powerful of the current line-up of Avengers.

 

Zemo agreed, freeing Blackout. However, he was justifiably concerned about Moonstone being a threat to his leadership. Thus, he had the Fixer (Norbert Ebersol) invent a device that made Blackout believe everything Zemo told him.

 

The Masters invaded and took control of Avengers Mansion. Blackout engulfed it in a block of solid darkforce.

 

When the Avengers eventually retook it, Zemo ordered Blackout to send the entire mansion into the Darkforce Dimension. But Doctor Druid used his psychic abilities to help Blackout fend off Zemo’s control.

 

However the strain was too much. Blackout suffered a massive brain hemorrhage.

 

Twice displaced

 

A version of Blackout was once time-displaced by Zarrko the Tomorrow Man. He and many others were deployed to delay the Fantastic Four. It likely was a version of Marcus Daniels from the early 1980s.

 

A version of Baron Helmut Zemo’s Masters of Evil was once set on a quest to locate Cosmic Cube fragments. Zemo, with Arnim Zola as his scientific advisor, had a complex plan to ally with Crescendo and conquer two versions of Earth – a Marvel Comics and a Valiant Comics one.

 

However, these likely weren’t the Daniels, Zemo, Zola, etc. of Earth-616The main Marvel Comics version of Earth. .

 

History (part 2)

 

Blackout’s body was kept alive by the authorities.

 

Years later, when Zemo worked with the Commission on Superhuman Activities, he was given Blackout. The goal was to recover Atlas’ younger brother, the Smuggler, who was stranded in the Darkforce Dimension.

 

Zemo used the artificially animated Blackout when his group confronted the Thunderbolts over the life of their member, Photon.

 

His disposition following this, and whether he is actually dead, in uncertain, but he probably returned to CSA custody.

 

Mobs

 

In 2009-2010, a man wearing a Blackout costume was repeatedly spotted among Hood (Parker Robbins)’s mobsters. He never said anything, used any power or did anything notable. So it may or may not have been Marcus Daniels.

 

In 2014, Blackout was part of a Masters of Evil roster assembled by Lightmaster (Edward Lansky). This team fought the Superior Spider-Man (Dr. Otto Octavius) and his Superior Six.

 

During the fray, Blackout shut off Electro (Max Dillon)’s powers by absorbing his charge. But he was then stunned by a light blast from Sun Girl (Selah Burke).

 

Marcus Daniels was then implanted with another personality and memories, as “Bob Hoffstetter”.

 

Mr. Hoffstetter was an insurance claims adjuster, living in a comfortable New Jersey suburb. He had a wife and two daughters (Chelsea and Hannah), and seemed to have a mundane but generally happy life.

 

A likely sequence of events is:

 

This false personality and biography likely were created in S.H.I.E.L.D.’s Pleasant Hill super-prison. Which likely means that Blackout was arrested some time after the clash with the Superior Six.

 

When the Pleasant Hill prison came apart, “Bob Hoffstetter” apparently clung to his fake past and persona. Whereas most inmates were furious to realise that their lives had been simulations, making them forget about their real selves.

 

By 2017, “Bob” was in New Jersey. He was living in a house that wasn’t his – what happened to the real owners is unclear. He maintained the fiction that the house was his, that he still was Bob Hoffstetter, and that his imaginary family was in Wisconsin to visit his mother-in-law.

 

Baron Helmut Zemo eventually found him, then undid the “Bob Hoffstetter” conditioning. This restored the Blackout memories and personality.

 

Blackout was a key member of Zemo’s Army of Evil – a greatly expanded version of the Masters of Evil. These were an important part of the 2017 conquest of the United States by Hydra, led by a Captain America impersonator.

 

The Army rampaged in Manhattan, to have as many super-heroes respond as they could. They then teleported out. Zemo used a copy of the Darkhold evil mystical tome to bolster Blackout’s power, allowing him to manifest a gigantic and indestructible Darkforce dome.

 

This dome extended from the Southern tip of Manhattan and all the way to Central Park. It trapped millions, including dozens of super-heroes, for weeks. This removed a large number of Hydra foes from the board before Fascist!Rogers made his move.

 

The heroes within the Manhattan dome narrowly managed to survive. And Zemo didn’t quite break the Hoffstetter conditioning. It is possible that Marcus Daniels preferred being Bob Hoffstetter.

 

S.H.I.E.L.D. director Maria Hill eventually located and murdered Blackout. As he was being Bob, he was confused and didn’t resist. His death dispersed the Darkforce dome, precipitating Hydra’s fall.

 

A way back from the dark

In the wake of the Hydra war and occupation, Dr. Strange cast an enormous spell to restore the razed city of Las Vegas. This resurrected hundreds of thousands, but also opened a breach that the Mephisto immediately exploited.

 

Blackout was among those who seized this conduit back from the underworld, and won a gambling game to be resurrected.

 

A man in a Blackout costume soon appeared as part of a large mob of Hood made men. Though there again let’s stay a bit wary about whether this person, who said nothing and did nothing, actually was Marcus Daniels.

 

Personality

 

Originally – either an honest, law-abiding citizen, or a bitter, resentful thug.

 

But in either case, the energies that gave him his powers also affected his mind. He became increasingly paranoid.

 

After Moonstone worked to make him more reliant on her, he eventually became practically catatonic. He would react only to her commands, or to Zemo’s, once he gained control of Blackout.

 

That lasted until his mind was freed from their control by Doctor Druid. At this point he reverted to his highly paranoid mindset, even rejecting Druid’s suggestions.

 

Zemo later worked so Daniels would trust him. This was mostly done when he had his mild-mannered, not-paranoid Hoffstetter personality.

 

Daniels’ conflicting accounts of his origin sequence, and embrace of the Hoffstetter persona, form a pattern of wanting to reinvent his life to fit whatever narrative makes him more comfortable.

 

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

 

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Secret Identity: Marcus Daniels

 

Publisher: Marvel

 

First Appearance: Nova #19 (May 1978)

 

Created by: Marv Wolfman (writer)

Carmine Infantino (artist)

  

Liber Primus

The first part of the Red Book, Liber Primus, has a prologue, "The Way of the Future. See note 16, which begins with biblical quotations emphasizing the incarnation and the terrible trial it constitutes (Isaiah 53:1-4; John 1:14). The last part of the Red Book, Tests. See note 16, ends with "The Seven Sermons to the Dead", and its main object, once again, is the embodiment in space-time life of a broader spiritual reality, now called "the pleroma". Thus, the theme of incarnation as reported in The Red Book was clearly Jung's alpha and omega. The intermediate journey was sometimes ecstatic, but it was also extremely painful. The beginning of the text contrasts the "spirit of this time", the rational-scientific attitude of the collective consciousness, with the "spirit of the depths", the mysterious wisdom in its mythopoietic form long lost to consciousness. Jung begins with these words: "If I speak in the spirit of this time, I must say: nothing and no one can justify what I must proclaim to you. Any justification is superfluous for me, because I have no choice, but I need it. The Red Book (later: RB), p. 229[In this article,..... "These are the words of someone who mobilizes, and who is mobilized by, a numinous power. Jung's freedom, and that would be the freedom of anyone in this situation, was to know not what he wanted to do, but what he had to do, in this case: follow the spirit of the deep. The "spirit of this time" maintains that what is said by the other spirit, that of the depths, is madness. Jung answers: "It's true, it's true, what I'm saying is the greatness, the drunkenness and the ugliness of madness[. RB, p. 230... "Within this danger, he needs a "visible sign" RB, p. 231. "that would show him that the spirit of the depths is at the same time the one who governs the depths of the world's affairs. His need for a visible sign is important to understand the depth and nature of his experience. This need could demonstrate that his visions were of a different type than those described by mystics as unio mystica. When a person reaches this transcendent level, that is, when his soul leaves him to join the "Infinite Light" or whatever metaphor is chosen for this ineffable experience, there is no need for an external sign. The person simply knows. Jung's visions were different. They were founded in the psyche and the world of archetypes.Terribly disturbing visions set the process in motion, like the lightning bolt that marked the beginning of the alchemical opus. In October 1913, Jung had a vision that lasted two hours and came back, even more violently, two weeks later: "During the day, I was suddenly attacked by a vision in broad daylight: I saw a terrifying tide that covered all the northern and lowland countries between the North Sea and the Alps. It extended from England to Russia, and from the North Sea coast to the Alps. I saw yellow waves, floating rubble, and the death of countless thousands of human beings. RB, p. 231... "An inner voice says, "Look carefully, it's very real and it will happen that way. You can't doubt that... [The vision] left me exhausted and confused. And I thought that madness had seized my mind. RB, p. 231... » Finally, Jung obtained his "sign" linking the source of his vision and world affairs - the First World War broke out (officially, on January 8, 1914). Jung then sought what in his latest works would be called an experience of synchronicity, a meaningful relationship between inner and outer events. He seeks an archetypal, impersonal understanding of the chaos that engulfed him. It may well be that his visions were prophetic. But his answer shows him identified with the archetypal source, the condition of narcissism: "I encountered the colossal cold that froze everything; I encountered the tide, the sea of blood, and found my barren tree whose leaves had been transformed into a remedy by freezing. And I picked the ripe fruit and gave it to you, and I do not know what I offered you, what an intoxicating bitter-sweet drink, which left on your tongue an aftertaste of blood.

 

Liber Secundus

In this second part of the Red Book, Jung meets a figure he calls Izdubar, which is an older name of the Sumerian hero Gilgamesh. It seems to me that this meeting plays a crucial role in Jung's experience. For reasons of space, I did not refer in this article to Jung's drawings. But the one accompanying this passage must be mentioned. On the drawing - a character praying and a huge jet of fire in full propulsion - Jung noted a passage of the Upanishads where the god Prajapati makes tapas, and in doing so creates Agni, the Devourer, who attacks him. To avoid being killed by his own creation, Prajapati creates the world from his own members, that is, he enters space-time. This link between the creation of a new order and the simultaneous creation of chaos or disorder is the main dynamic of the transformation in The Red Book. In The Red Book, the giant Izdubar "was gigantic, like a hero of colossal power RB, p. 280... "He comes from the Light; and yet, this creature so superior to Jung by size is completely defeated by Jung's scientific explanations, which Izdubar feels as a powerful and victorious poison. This is the power of reason, which suppresses and reduces numinosum. Jung talks about his love for Izdubar, and says he doesn't want to see him die, but he's too old to be transported. He acknowledges that he can use his thinking to solve his dilemma: "I am fundamentally convinced that Izdubar is not real in the ordinary sense of the word, but that it is an RB fantasy, p. 280. "Izdubar is in agony but cannot help but accept. Izdubar becomes light, like a fantasy, and can be easily transported; Jung eventually reduces it to the size of an egg and puts it in his pocket[RB, p. 283... He needs to reduce it to keep some control.He realizes that he must let Izdubar out of the egg, because he realizes that "I still haven't accepted what embraces my heart. This frightening thing is the confinement of God in the bud... I defeated the Great One, I mourned him, I did not want to abandon him because I loved him, because no mortal could compete with him RB, p. 286-287... "But Izdubar's liberation has an unexpected result: "But when he gets up, I go down... All light abandons me.... Woe to the mother who gives birth to a God! A birth is difficult, but a thousand times more difficult is the infernal great-peace. All the dragons and monstrous snakes of eternal emptiness succeed the divine son. RB, p. 287 Order and disorder begin to be linked as integral parts of a process. "If God approaches, your being begins to bubble and the black mud from the depths rises swirling. "A thousand times more difficult is the great peace. RB, p. 287... "He reflects on the power of the created disorder that he also identifies with evil or chaos: forms (such as) "an oppressive association with the object. RB, p. 287, "can only be dissolved by evil. So, despite the wisdom he has acquired, he returns to realization: "I still don't know what it means to give birth to a God. RB, p. 290," that is, to the self within. In a later passage, probably because he was seeking refuge from chaos, he imagined entering a library, relying on his thoughts. But thought can no longer be his refuge. He was soon confused and heard "a strange rustle and purr - and suddenly, a roaring sound filled the room like a horde of huge birds - with a frenetic flapping of wings.... RB, p. 294: "Jung's flight to spirit and order has created a powerful form of disorder, and he finds himself in a madhouse. He reflects on his old "protective and repeatedly polished crust, covering the mystery of chaos. If you break through this wall, it could not be more ordinary, the flow overflowing with chaos will penetrate it. Chaos is not simple, it is an infinite multiplicity..... It is full of figures which, because of their fullness, have the effect of disturbing us and submerging us.... These figures are the dead, not just your dead, that is, all the images of the forms you have taken in the past and that the course of your life has left behind, but also the swarming crowd of the dead of human history, the ghostly procession of the past, which is an ocean compared to the drops that constitute the whole extent of your own life.... (The dead) have lived on the heights and accomplished the lowest things. They forgot one thing: they did not experience their animal.... And that too is the failure of Christ. RB, pp. 295-296... If we are in our bodies, close to the energies of the animal in us, we are not crazy. And that is why Jung realizes that Christianity - with its rejection of the flesh - cannot save him from his fall into madness. For Jung, the dead are those aspects of his soul that represent his escape from the body, and aspects of this same escape in the (Christian) generations preceding him, in his parents, grandparents etc.

 

The Red Book is a red leather‐bound folio manuscript crafted by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung between 1915 and about 1930. It recounts and comments upon the author's imaginative experiences between 1913 and 1916, and is based on manuscripts first drafted by Jung in 1914–15 and 1917. Despite being nominated as the central work in Jung’s oeuvre, it was not published or made otherwise accessible for study until 2009.

In October 2009, with the cooperation of Jung's estate, The Red Book: Liber Novus was published by W. W. Norton in a facsimile edition, complete with an English translation, three appendices, and over 1500 editorial notes. Editions and translations in several other languages soon followed. In December 2012, Norton additionally released a "Reader's Edition" of the work; this smaller format edition includes the complete translated text of The Red Book: Liber Novus along with the introduction and notes prepared by Shamdasani, but it omits the facsimile reproduction of Jung's original calligraphic manuscript.

While the work has in past years been descriptively called simply "The Red Book", Jung did emboss a formal title on the spine of his leather-bound folio: he titled the work Liber Novus (in Latin, the "New Book"). His manuscript is now increasingly cited as Liber Novus, and under this title implicitly includes draft material intended for but never finally transcribed into the red leather folio proper.The existence of C.G. Jung's Red Book was revealed by the publication of his autobiography My Life - Memories, Dreams and Thoughts. C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, A. Jaffe (Ed.), R..... The autobiography contained in the appendix a treatise of Gnostic appearance, "The Seven Sermons to the Dead", the last part of the Red Book as we now possess it.However, the "Sermons" alone tell us little about the Red Book, and the latter has remained surrounded by an aura of secrecy, as it was for me when I studied in Zurich from 1966 to 1970.2 Secrets create a void that attracts projections, and the Red Book certainly had that effect.Why had it not been published?In Zurich, fantasies were swirling: it was said that the Jung family kept him because Jung said he was the Messiah, or because Jung appeared as a psychotic, etc.We are finally in a position to evaluate these fantasies.But the publication, in a magnificent facsimile edition - a work in which the love and devotion of its publisher, Sonu Shamdasani, transpired and which has spanned a decade - also opens up a completely new field of research.For if, as Jung says in his autobiography, the Red Book was his prima materia for the rest of his life[3][3]Ibid. at 199 (translation fr. cit. at 231-232), it can be assumed that there is a strong link between these experiences and the Collected Works.3 This is only partially the case.Although the sources of the main themes of the Collected Works can certainly be found in The Red Book, there are also significant differences.In particular, chaos or disorder plays a much greater and more important role in The Red Book than in Collected Works where order plays the main role, through the order-producing function of archetypes, for example.This has far-reaching implications for Jungian psychology as a form of psychotherapy, more than as a doctrine of wisdom or as a modern form of sustainable philosophy[4].[4]M.-L. von Franz, among others, made the suggestion, during a..., but also for our evaluation of C.G. Jung's work.4C.G. Jung's Red Book is a series of dialogues, caused by striking and confusing dreams he had in 1912, with various figures of his imagination, then with repetitive fantasies that he could not understand, such as: "there was something dead, but that was still alive[5][5]C.G. Jung, 1973, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, op. cit.,..."; then, in the fall of 1913, with an outbreak of global catastrophe hallucinations. Its immersion in the unconscious then began and continued in the spring of 1914, maintaining all its intensity for about five months, but it will continue in 1916.There were periods of disorientation for several more years, but they eventually decreased with the understanding of his mandala drawings (which are contained in The Red Book) as an expression of the self: these drawings as well as his rational and scientific mind allowed him to contain his chaos. "I (first) tried an aesthetic elaboration of my.....5 Jung tells us that he had to control his fantasies in one way or another, but also that an intense fear and "violent resistance" kept him from "letting himself fall into them. Ibid, p. 178 (translated from english, p. 207). ». He recorded the fantasies he experienced in a series of "Black Papers" that covered most of the most intense period and ended in 1916 with the "Seven Sermons to the Dead. "Later, and over a period of several years, he transcribed in The Red Book his imaginative encounters into a process that he would later call "active imagination". The dialogues are interspersed with passages in the form of wisdom teachings enunciated by an amalgam (which eventually transforms) of Jung and his inner images. Later, he realized that many of these images had been precursors of the central figure of the Red Book, Philemon.

But unlike a schizophrenic, Jung was able to consider his fantasies and relate to them consciously. He was able to bring them back into space and time, so to speak, and what completely distinguishes him from a madman is that he made the choice to connect his inner world to the common reality. In addition, Jung has never decompensated during these years, as is usually the case during a psychotic episode. On the contrary, he continued his psychotherapy practice full-time and did not lose contact with his family life. It is surely wrong to think that Jung was crazy, or that he was a schizophrenic who would have treated himself creatively. But to recognize that Jung, like everyone else, to one degree or another, had crazy parts within an otherwise healthy personality. N. Schwartz-Salant, The Mystery of Human Relationship, New..., and that he suffered the horrors of this madness which was ultimately a source of both limitation and transformation, this is a very reasonable assumption. The Red Book expresses a narcissistic feature of Jung's personality before his "descent" into the unconscious, namely the amalgamation of his self with more unconscious, non-moic or archetypal energies, and his transformation. But before following the trace of this process in The Red Book, a quick reflection on the terms numinosum, narcissism, and self will be useful to understand Jung's journey. When Rudolph Otto wrote The Sacred and made the numinosum the nucleus of the religious experience, he said: "We invite the reader to focus his attention on a moment when he felt a deep and, as far as possible, exclusively religious emotion. If he is unable to do so or if he does not even know of such moments, we ask him to stop reading here. R. Otto, The Idea of the Holy, London: Oxford University...... » If one does not know the numinosum as a religious consciousness of the totally "Other", attested by emotions such as fear, terror, fascination, fright and beauty, one can use concepts such as narcissism to illuminate certain aspects of Jung's personality and system, but in so doing, one may also misunderstand and pathologize others[. An example is given by Jeffrey Satinover's analysis,...... In this spirit, I use the term "narcissism" with caution. This conceptual tool helps us to understand the experiences that Jung reported in The Red Book and how they affected the Collected Works. But Jung's narcissism does not define the nature of what happened to him, and it should not be used to foolishly criticize. NB: Although the Red Book shows various narcissistic features of Jung's personality, it is another matter to talk about a narcissistic personality. This diagnosis can only be confirmed by the nature of the transfers involved. Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self, NY: International..., and we have only anecdotal evidence in this regard. In this study, I will therefore deal with those of Jung's narcissistic traits that appear clearly in The Red Book, in particular his fusion myself, and his remarkable struggle to dissolve this state of fusion, which leads to an authentic relationship me-self. The Jungian notion of self used in this article differs in its orientation from other psychoanalytical visions of self . N. Schwartz-Salant, Narcissism and Character Transformation,...... The key difference is that the self, which is a source of identity and our most intimate compass for living in a way that is felt to be authentic and true, is not the consequence of the internalization of object relationships, as with most psychoanalytical approaches. The self is an archetype. Metaphorically speaking, it's our psychic DNA. We were born with him. It is a complex energy system, which includes processes of order and disorder. Consciously realizing the existence of the self is often a long and arduous path, the path, in fact, that Jung called individuation. On the one hand, the self must be "seen" or "mirrored" by others in order to be gradually realized, which makes it possible to obtain a self-self relationship instead of a fusion. The state of fusion is a normal step, but if it stabilizes, what we call a grandiose exhibitionist self occurs. In this fusion, the self does not know that the self exists; it believes it is the self. On the other hand, inner experiences of the numinousness of the self can also lead to its actualisation. All his life, Jung doubted the need for external "mirror reflection" and the internalization of the object relationships that go hand in hand, because he saw in it a risk of altering the essential nature of the self. That's why he focused on internal objects. In general, The Red Book is Jung's encounter with the transformative power of numinosum, and it shows how Jung brought the fruits of this encounter back into spatial and temporal reality. In particular, The Red Book is a remarkable testimony to a fusion of myself and self transformed by the fire of chaos or madness, terms that Jung uses interchangeably. His effort to embody the wisdom he has acquired, both personally and in his Collected Works, is a remarkable journey. I am not aware of anything comparable in all the mystical or, more broadly, visionary literature. The Red Book is divided into three parts, Liber Primus, Liber Secundus and Events. The thread that connects these parts is analogous to a dream that begins with the initial position of the problem - the embodiment of a new spiritual attitude - and leads, through various episodes, to a lysis - the emergence of a relationship between myself and self. Jung's experience of such a profound psychological process was clearly a precursor to his notion of psychological reality and individuation, just as Philemon was the precursor to his idea of the self.

Context and composition

Jung was associated with Sigmund Freud for a period of approximately six years, beginning in 1907. Over those years, their relationship became increasingly acrimonious. When the final break of the relationship came in 1913, Jung retreated from many of his professional activities to intensely reconsider his personal and professional path. The creative activity that produced Liber Novus came in this period, from 1913 to about 1917.Biographers and critics have disagreed whether these years in Jung's life should be seen as "a creative illness", a period of introspection, a psychotic break, or simply madness." Anthony Storr, reflecting on Jung's own judgment that he was "menaced by a psychosis" during this time, concluded that the period represented a psychotic episode.[8] According to Sonu Shamdasani, Storr's opinion is untenable in light of currently available documentation. During the years Jung engaged with his "nocturnal work" on Liber Novus, he continued to function in his daytime activities without any evident impairment. He maintained a busy professional practice, seeing on average five patients a day. He lectured, wrote, and remained active in professional associations. Throughout this period he also served as an officer in the Swiss army and was on active duty over several extended periods between 1914 and 1918, the years of World War I in which Jung was composing Liber Novus. Jung was not "psychotic" by any accepted clinical criteria during the period he created Liber Novus. Nonetheless, what he was doing during these years defies facile categorization. Jung referred to his imaginative or visionary venture during these years as "my most difficult experiment."This experiment involved a voluntary confrontation with the unconscious through willful engagement of what Jung later termed "mythopoetic imagination". In his introduction to Liber Novus, Shamdasani explains: "From December 1913 onward, he carried on in the same procedure: deliberately evoking a fantasy in a waking state, and then entering into it as into a drama. These fantasies may be understood as a type of dramatized thinking in pictorial form.... In retrospect, he recalled that his scientific question was to see what took place when he switched off consciousness. The example of dreams indicated the existence of background activity, and he wanted to give this a possibility of emerging, just as one does when taking mescaline." Jung initially recorded his "visions", or "fantasies, or "imaginations" — all terms used by Jung to describe his activity — in a series of six journals now known collectively as the "Black Books". This journal record begins on 12 November 1913, and continues with intensity through the summer of 1914; subsequent entries were added up through at least the 1930s. Biographer Barbara Hannah, who was close to Jung throughout the last three decades of his life, compared Jung's imaginative experiences recounted in his journals to the encounter of Menelaus with Proteus in the Odyssey. Jung, she said, "made it a rule never to let a figure or figures that he encountered leave until they had told him why they had appeared to him." After the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, Jung perceived that his visionary experience was not only of personal relevance, but entwined with a crucial cultural moment. In late-1914 and 1915 he compiled the visions from the journals, along with his additional commentary on each imaginative episode, into an initial manuscript. This manuscript was the beginning of Liber Novus. In 1915 Jung began artfully transcribing this draft text into the illuminated calligraphic volume that would subsequently become known as the Red Book. In 1917 he compiled a further supplementary manuscript of visionary material and commentary, which he titled "Scrutinies"; this also was apparently intended for transcription into his red folio volume, the "Red Book". Although Jung labored on the artful transcription of this corpus of manuscript material into the calligraphic folio of the Red Book for sixteen years, he never completed the task. Only approximately two-thirds of Jung's manuscript text was transcribed into the Red Book by 1930, when he abandoned further work on the calligraphic transcription of his draft material into the Red Book. The published edition of The Red Book: Liber Novus includes all of Jung's manuscript material prepared for Liber Novus, and not just the portion of the text transcribed by Jung into the calligraphic red book volume.In 1957, near the end of his life, Jung spoke to Aniela Jaffé about the Red Book and the process which yielded it; in that interview he stated: "The years… when I pursued the inner images, were the most important time of my life. Everything else is to be derived from this. It began at that time, and the later details hardly matter anymore. My entire life consisted in elaborating what had burst forth from the unconscious and flooded me like an enigmatic stream and threatened to break me. That was the stuff and material for more than only one life. Everything later was merely the outer classification, scientific elaboration, and the integration into life. But the numinous beginning, which contained everything, was then." He wrote a short epilog in 1959 after leaving the book more or less untouched for about 30 years: “To the superficial observer, it will appear like madness.”

Creation and physical description

The Red Book resting on Jung's desk

Jung worked his text and images in the Red Book using calligraphic pen, multicolored ink, and gouache paint. The text is written in German but includes quotations from the Vulgate in Latin, a few inscriptions and names written in Latin and Greek, and a brief marginal quotation from the Bhagavad Gita given in English. The initial seven folios (or leaves) of the book — which contain what is now entitled Liber Primus (the "First Book") of Liber Novus — were composed on sheets of parchment in a highly illuminated medieval style. However, as Jung proceeded working with the parchment sheets, it became apparent that their surface was not holding his paint properly and that his ink was bleeding through. These first seven leaves (fourteen pages, recto and verso) now show heavy chipping of paint, as will be noted on close examination of the facsimile edition reproductions.

 

In 1915, Jung commissioned the folio-sized and red leatherbound volume now known as the Red Book. The bound volume contained approximately 600 blank pages of paper of a quality suitable for Jung's ink and paint. The folio-sized volume, 11.57 inches (29.4 cm) by 15.35 inches (39.0 cm), is bound in fine red leather with gilt accents. Though Jung and others usually referred to the book simply as the "Red Book", he had the top of the spine of the book stamped in gilt with the book's formal title, Liber Novus ("The New Book"). Jung subsequently interleaved the seven original parchment sheets at the beginning of the bound volume. After receiving the bound volume in 1915, he began transcribing his text and illustrations directly onto the bound pages. Over the next many years, Jung ultimately filled only 191 of the approximately 600 pages bound in the Red Book folio.[28] About a third of the manuscript material he had written was never entered into the illuminated Red Book. Inside the book now are 205 completed pages of text and illustrations (including the loose parchment sheets), all from Jung's hand: 53 full-page images, 71 pages with both text and artwork, and 81 pages entirely of calligraphic text. The Red Book is currently held, along with other valuable and private items from Jung's archive, in a bank vault in Zurich.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Book_(Jung)

Therefore I am by Michael Peck. Oil on linen. Sulman Prize finalist.

 

Drawing on psychological and philosophical influences, this painting investigates the relationship between the conscious and subconscious mind, and looks at the way that memory, experience, history and relationships all come together to create both order and disorder in the way we view the world.

 

The painting explores the notion that thought is slippery and can be difficult to pin down. It constantly reacts to stimuli, forming then reforming our understanding of the world and our own sense of self. Thought can prove the same idea true then false, but it is through challenging these contradictions that we learn the most, Michael Peck, 2017.

 

Archibald Prize Exhibition, Art Gallery NSW, Sydney, Australia (Monday 31 July 2017)

Description: Pareidolia is the psychological phenomenon where people see recognizable shapes in clouds, rock formations, or otherwise unrelated objects or data. When Chandra's image of PSR B1509-58, a spinning neutron star surrounded by a cloud of energetic particles, was released in 2009, it quickly gained attention because many saw a hand-like structure in the X-ray emission. In this new image of the system, X-rays from Chandra in gold are seen along with infrared data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) telescope in red, green, and blue. Pareidolia may strike again in this image as some people report seeing a shape of a face in WISE's infrared data.

 

Creator: Chandra X-ray Observatory Center

 

Record URL: chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2014/archives/

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is widely acknowledged as the most important realist painter of twentieth-century America. Among one of his last (1963) and largest paintings, 'Intermission' captures one of his most potent themes....a solitary figure in a public space, framed in an almost cinematic composition. While the artist's wife, Jo, was the model for nearly all of his female subjects, Hopper identified the woman seated here as an imagined persona named Nora. In the record book of her husband's paintings, Jo described this quiet, empty scene as a psychological portrait.

 

Edward Hopper was a lifelong devotee of cinema and theatre. It was a theme to which he returned to frequently. Typically for him as a master of solitude, instead of capturing the action on the stage or bustle of a crowd, he chose to focus on quiet moments before or, in this case, during a break in the performance.

 

This Hopper original was seen and photographed at San Francisco's Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA).

"Pareidolia (/pærɨˈdoʊliə/ parr-i-doh-lee-ə) is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus (often an image or sound) being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records when played in reverse.

The word comes from the Greek words para (παρά, "beside, alongside, instead") in this context meaning something faulty, wrong, instead of; and the noun eidōlon (εἴδωλον "image, form, shape") the diminutive of eidos." Source: Wikipedia

 

Macro Mondays, Oil and/or Water - the Water part - will try for another contribution today, but I have a sick child and an even sicker laptop to contend with, so may be pushed.

 

The Flickr Lounge, Around The House

7DOS, Week #16 - Early Morning, Thoroughly Abstract Thursday

52 Weeks of Pix 2014 - What Am I? I've taken a bit of a break from posting regularly on Flickr and am now trying to get back into things, albeit slowly.

 

So, this is something we all need and use on a daily basis and tend to use first thing in the day, through the day and last thing at night. Answers on a postcard :-) - I'll reveal all in the tags in good time.

 

Thank you for any comments and/or favourites, which I always appreciate. I am taking a bit of a step back from most things Flickr so my apologies if I don't reciprocate, but I'll try to do so when I pop in for a quick visit.

In the meanwhile I'll be posting regularly on my Facebook page - you're welcome to visit me at www.facebook.com/LyndaHPhotography

A dark pattern is "a user interface that has been carefully crafted to trick users into doing things, such as buying insurance with their purchase or signing up for recurring bills." The neologism dark pattern was coined by Harry Brignull on July 28, 2010 with the registration of darkpatterns.org, a "pattern library with the specific goal of naming and shaming deceptive user interfaces.Bait-and-switch patterns advertise a free (or greatly reduced) product or service which is wholly unavailable or stocked in small quantities. After it is apparent the product is no longer available, they are exposed to other priced products similar to the one advertised. This is common in software installers, where a button will be presented in the fashion of a typical continuation button. It is common that one has to accept the program's terms of service, so a dark pattern would show a prominent "I accept these terms" button on a page where the user is asked to accept the terms of a program unrelated to the program they are trying to install. Since the user will typically accept the terms by force of habit, the unrelated program can subsequently be installed. The installer's authors do this because they are paid by the authors of the unrelated program for each install that they procure. The alternative route in the installer, allowing the user to skip installing the unrelated program, is much less prominently displayed or seems counter-intuitive (such as declining the terms of service).

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_pattern

 

This pattern is also used by some websites, where the user is shown a page where information is asked that is not required. For example, one would fill out a username and password on one page, and after clicking the "next" button the user is asked for their email address with another "next" button as the only option. It is not apparent that the step can be skipped. When simply pressing "next" without entering their personal information, however, the website will just continue. In some cases, a method to skip the step is visible but not shown as a button (instead, usually, as a small and greyed-out link) so that it does not stand out to the user. Other examples that often use this pattern are inviting friends by entering someone else's email address, uploading a profile picture, or selecting interests.

 

”This is a civilizational moment in a way I’m not sure we’re all reckoning with,” Harris said on stage. “It’s a historical moment when a species that is intelligent builds technology that ... can simulate a puppet version of its creator, and the puppet can control the master. That’s an unprecedented situation to be in. That could be the end of human agency, when you can perfectly simulate not just the strengths of people but their weaknesses.”

 

Where does technology exploit our minds weaknesses?

 

I learned to think this way when I was a magician. Magicians start by looking for blind spots, edges, vulnerabilities and limits of people’s perception, so they can influence what people do without them even realizing it. Once you know how to push people’s buttons, you can play them like a piano.

  

That’s me performing sleight of hand magic at my mother’s birthday party

And this is exactly what product designers do to your mind. They play your psychological vulnerabilities (consciously and unconsciously) against you in the race to grab your attention.

 

I want to show you how they do it.

 

Hijack #1: If You Control the Menu, You Control the Choices

 

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Western Culture is built around ideals of individual choice and freedom. Millions of us fiercely defend our right to make “free” choices, while we ignore how we’re manipulated upstream by limited menus we didn’t choose.

 

This is exactly what magicians do. They give people the illusion of free choice while architecting the menu so that they win, no matter what you choose. I can’t emphasize how deep this insight is.

 

When people are given a menu of choices, they rarely ask:

 

“what’s not on the menu?”

“why am I being given these options and not others?”

“do I know the menu provider’s goals?”

“is this menu empowering for my original need, or are the choices actually a distraction?” (e.g. an overwhelmingly array of toothpastes)

Photo by Kevin McShane

 

How empowering is this menu of choices for the need, “I ran out of toothpaste”?

For example, imagine you’re out with friends on a Tuesday night and want to keep the conversation going. You open Yelp to find nearby recommendations and see a list of bars. The group turns into a huddle of faces staring down at their phones comparing bars. They scrutinize the photos of each, comparing cocktail drinks. Is this menu still relevant to the original desire of the group?

 

It’s not that bars aren’t a good choice, it’s that Yelp substituted the group’s original question (“where can we go to keep talking?”) with a different question (“what’s a bar with good photos of cocktails?”) all by shaping the menu.

 

Moreover, the group falls for the illusion that Yelp’s menu represents acomplete set of choices for where to go. While looking down at their phones, they don’t see the park across the street with a band playing live music. They miss the pop-up gallery on the other side of the street serving crepes and coffee. Neither of those show up on Yelp’s menu.

 

Yelp subtly reframes the group’s need “where can we go to keep talking?” in terms of photos of cocktails served.

The more choices technology gives us in nearly every domain of our lives (information, events, places to go, friends, dating, jobs) — the more we assume that our phone is always the most empowering and useful menu to pick from. Is it?

 

The “most empowering” menu is different than the menu that has the most choices. But when we blindly surrender to the menus we’re given, it’s easy to lose track of the difference:

 

“Who’s free tonight to hang out?” becomes a menu of most recent people who texted us (who we could ping).

“What’s happening in the world?” becomes a menu of news feed stories.

“Who’s single to go on a date?” becomes a menu of faces to swipe on Tinder (instead of local events with friends, or urban adventures nearby).

“I have to respond to this email.” becomes a menu of keys to type a response (instead of empowering ways to communicate with a person).

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All user interfaces are menus. What if your email client gave you empowering choices of ways to respond, instead of “what message do you want to type back?” (Design by Tristan Harris)

When we wake up in the morning and turn our phone over to see a list of notifications — it frames the experience of “waking up in the morning” around a menu of “all the things I’ve missed since yesterday.”

  

A list of notifications when we wake up in the morning — how empowering is this menu of choices when we wake up? Does it reflect what we care about? (credit to Joe Edelman)

By shaping the menus we pick from, technology hijacks the way we perceive our choices and replaces them new ones. But the closer we pay attention to the options we’re given, the more we’ll notice when they don’t actually align with our true needs.

 

Hijack #2: Put a Slot Machine In a Billion Pockets

 

If you’re an app, how do you keep people hooked? Turn yourself into a slot machine.

 

The average person checks their phone 150 times a day. Why do we do this? Are we making 150 conscious choices?

  

How often do you check your email per day?

One major reason why is the #1 psychological ingredient in slot machines:intermittent variable rewards.

 

If you want to maximize addictiveness, all tech designers need to do is link a user’s action (like pulling a lever) with a variable reward. You pull a lever and immediately receive either an enticing reward (a match, a prize!) or nothing. Addictiveness is maximized when the rate of reward is most variable.

 

Does this effect really work on people? Yes. Slot machines make more money in the United States than baseball, movies, and theme parkscombined. Relative to other kinds of gambling, people get ‘problematically involved’ with slot machines 3–4x faster according to NYU professor Natasha Dow Shull, author of Addiction by Design.

 

But here’s the unfortunate truth — several billion people have a slot machine their pocket:

 

When we pull our phone out of our pocket, we’re playing a slot machineto see what notifications we got.

When we pull to refresh our email, we’re playing a slot machine to see what new email we got.

When we swipe down our finger to scroll the Instagram feed, we’replaying a slot machine to see what photo comes next.

When we swipe faces left/right on dating apps like Tinder, we’re playing a slot machine to see if we got a match.

When we tap the # of red notifications, we’re playing a slot machine to what’s underneath.

 

Apps and websites sprinkle intermittent variable rewards all over their products because it’s good for business.

 

But in other cases, slot machines emerge by accident. For example, there is no malicious corporation behind all of email who consciously chose to make it a slot machine. No one profits when millions check their email and nothing’s there. Neither did Apple and Google’s designers want phones to work like slot machines. It emerged by accident.

 

But now companies like Apple and Google have a responsibility to reduce these effects by converting intermittent variable rewards into less addictive, more predictable ones with better design. For example, they could empower people to set predictable times during the day or week for when they want to check “slot machine” apps, and correspondingly adjust when new messages are delivered to align with those times.

 

Hijack #3: Fear of Missing Something Important (FOMSI)

 

Another way apps and websites hijack people’s minds is by inducing a “1% chance you could be missing something important.”

 

If I convince you that I’m a channel for important information, messages, friendships, or potential sexual opportunities — it will be hard for you to turn me off, unsubscribe, or remove your account — because (aha, I win) you might miss something important:

 

This keeps us subscribed to newsletters even after they haven’t delivered recent benefits (“what if I miss a future announcement?”)

This keeps us “friended” to people with whom we haven’t spoke in ages (“what if I miss something important from them?”)

This keeps us swiping faces on dating apps, even when we haven’t even met up with anyone in a while (“what if I miss that one hot match who likes me?”)

This keeps us using social media (“what if I miss that important news story or fall behind what my friends are talking about?”)

But if we zoom into that fear, we’ll discover that it’s unbounded: we’ll always miss something important at any point when we stop using something.

 

There are magic moments on Facebook we’ll miss by not using it for the 6th hour (e.g. an old friend who’s visiting town right now).

There are magic moments we’ll miss on Tinder (e.g. our dream romantic partner) by not swiping our 700th match.

There are emergency phone calls we’ll miss if we’re not connected 24/7.

But living moment to moment with the fear of missing something isn’t how we’re built to live.

 

And it’s amazing how quickly, once we let go of that fear, we wake up from the illusion. When we unplug for more than a day, unsubscribe from those notifications, or go to Camp Grounded — the concerns we thought we’d have don’t actually happen.

 

We don’t miss what we don’t see.

 

The thought, “what if I miss something important?” is generated in advance of unplugging, unsubscribing, or turning off — not after. Imagine if tech companies recognized that, and helped us proactively tune our relationships with friends and businesses in terms of what we define as “time well spent” for our lives, instead of in terms of what we might miss.

 

Hijack #4: Social Approval

  

Easily one of the most persuasive things a human being can receive.

We’re all vulnerable to social approval. The need to belong, to be approved or appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations. But now our social approval is in the hands of tech companies (like when we’re tagged in a photo).

 

When I get tagged by my friend Marc (above), I imagine him making aconscious choice to tag me. But I don’t see how a company like Facebook orchestrated him doing that in the first place.

 

Facebook, Instagram or SnapChat can manipulate how often people get tagged in photos by automatically suggesting all the faces people should tag (e.g. by showing a box with a 1-click confirmation, “Tag Tristan in this photo?”).

 

So when Marc tags me, he’s actually responding to Facebook’s suggestion, not making an independent choice. But through design choices like this,Facebook controls the multiplier for how often millions of people experience their social approval on the line.

  

Facebook uses automatic suggestions like this to get people to tag more people, creating more social externalities and interruptions.

The same happens when we change our main profile photo — Facebook knows that’s a moment when we’re vulnerable to social approval: “what do my friends think of my new pic?” Facebook can rank this higher in the news feed, so it sticks around for longer and more friends will like or comment on it. Each time they like or comment on it, I’ll get pulled right back.

 

Everyone innately responds to social approval, but some demographics (teenagers) are more vulnerable to it than others. That’s why it’s so important to recognize how powerful designers are when they exploit this vulnerability.

  

Hijack #5: Social Reciprocity (Tit-for-tat)

 

You do me a favor, now I owe you one next time.

You say, “thank you”— I have to say “you’re welcome.”

You send me an email— it’s rude not to get back to you.

You follow me — it’s rude not to follow you back. (especially for teenagers)

We are vulnerable to needing to reciprocate others’ gestures. But as with Social Approval, tech companies now manipulate how often we experience it.

 

In some cases, it’s by accident. Email, texting and messaging apps are social reciprocity factories. But in other cases, companies exploit this vulnerability on purpose.

 

LinkedIn is the most obvious offender. LinkedIn wants as many people creating social obligations for each other as possible, because each time they reciprocate (by accepting a connection, responding to a message, or endorsing someone back for a skill) they have to come back through linkedin.com where they can get people to spend more time.

 

Like Facebook, LinkedIn exploits an asymmetry in perception. When you receive an invitation from someone to connect, you imagine that person making a conscious choice to invite you, when in reality, they likely unconsciously responded to LinkedIn’s list of suggested contacts. In other words, LinkedIn turns your unconscious impulses (to “add” a person) into new social obligations that millions of people feel obligated to repay. All while they profit from the time people spend doing it.

  

Imagine millions of people getting interrupted like this throughout their day, running around like chickens with their heads cut off, reciprocating each other — all designed by companies who profit from it.

 

Welcome to social media.

  

After accepting an endorsement, LinkedIn takes advantage of your bias to reciprocate by offering *four* additional people for you to endorse in return.

Imagine if technology companies had a responsibility to minimize social reciprocity. Or if there was an “FDA for Tech” that monitored when technology companies abused these biases?

  

Hijack #6: Bottomless bowls, Infinite Feeds, and Autoplay

  

YouTube autoplays the next video after a countdown

Another way to hijack people is to keep them consuming things, even when they aren’t hungry anymore.

 

How? Easy. Take an experience that was bounded and finite, and turn it into a bottomless flow that keeps going.

 

Cornell professor Brian Wansink demonstrated this in his study showing you can trick people into keep eating soup by giving them a bottomless bowl that automatically refills as they eat. With bottomless bowls, people eat 73% more calories than those with normal bowls and underestimate how many calories they ate by 140 calories.

 

Tech companies exploit the same principle. News feeds are purposely designed to auto-refill with reasons to keep you scrolling, and purposely eliminate any reason for you to pause, reconsider or leave.

 

It’s also why video and social media sites like Netflix, YouTube or Facebookautoplay the next video after a countdown instead of waiting for you to make a conscious choice (in case you won’t). A huge portion of traffic on these websites is driven by autoplaying the next thing.

  

Facebook autoplays the next video after a countdown

Tech companies often claim that “we’re just making it easier for users to see the video they want to watch” when they are actually serving their business interests. And you can’t blame them, because increasing “time spent” is the currency they compete for.

 

Instead, imagine if technology companies empowered you to consciously bound your experience to align with what would be “time well spent” for you. Not just bounding the quantity of time you spend, but the qualities of what would be “time well spent.”

 

Hijack #7: Instant Interruption vs. “Respectful” Delivery

 

Companies know that messages that interrupt people immediately are more persuasive at getting people to respond than messages delivered asynchronously (like email or any deferred inbox).

 

Given the choice, Facebook Messenger (or WhatsApp, WeChat or SnapChat for that matter) would prefer to design their messaging system to interrupt recipients immediately (and show a chat box) instead of helping users respect each other’s attention.

 

In other words, interruption is good for business.

 

It’s also in their interest to heighten the feeling of urgency and social reciprocity. For example, Facebook automatically tells the sender when you “saw” their message, instead of letting you avoid disclosing whether you read it(“now that you know I’ve seen the message, I feel even more obligated to respond.”) By contrast, Apple more respectfully lets users toggle “Read Receipts” on or off.

 

The problem is, while messaging apps maximize interruptions in the name of business, it creates a tragedy of the commons that ruins global attention spans and causes billions of interruptions every day. This is a huge problem we need to fix with shared design standards (potentially, as part of Time Well Spent).

 

Hijack #8: Bundling Your Reasons with Their Reasons

 

Another way apps hijack you is by taking your reasons for visiting the app (to perform a task) and make them inseparable from the app’s business reasons(maximizing how much we consume once we’re there).

 

For example, in the physical world of grocery stories, the #1 and #2 most popular reasons to visit are pharmacy refills and buying milk. But grocery stores want to maximize how much people buy, so they put the pharmacy and the milk at the back of the store.

 

In other words, they make the thing customers want (milk, pharmacy) inseparable from what the business wants. If stores were truly organized to support people, they would put the most popular items in the front.

 

Tech companies design their websites the same way. For example, when you you want to look up a Facebook event happening tonight (your reason) the Facebook app doesn’t allow you to access it without first landing on the news feed (their reasons), and that’s on purpose. Facebook wants to convert every reason you have for using Facebook, into their reason which is to maximize the time you spend consuming things.

 

In an ideal world, apps would always give you a direct way to get what you want separately from what they want.

 

Imagine a digital “bill of rights” outlining design standards that forced the products that billions of people used to support empowering ways to navigate towards their goals.

 

Hijack #9: Inconvenient Choices

 

We’re told that it’s enough for businesses to “make choices available.”

 

“If you don’t like it you can always use a different product.”

“If you don’t like it, you can always unsubscribe.”

“If you’re addicted to our app, you can always uninstall it from your phone.”

Businesses naturally want to make the choices they want you to make easier, and the choices they don’t want you to make harder. Magicians do the same thing. You make it easier for a spectator to pick the thing you want them to pick, and harder to pick the thing you don’t.

 

For example, NYTimes.com let’s you “make a free choice” to cancel your digital subscription. But instead of just doing it when you hit “Cancel Subscription,” they force you to call a phone number that’s only open at certain times.

  

NYTimes claims it’s giving a free choice to cancel your account

Instead of viewing the world in terms of choice availability of choices, we should view the world in terms of friction required to enact choices.

 

Imagine a world where choices were labeled with how difficult they were to fulfill (like coefficients of friction) and there was an FDA for Tech that labeled these difficulties and set standards for how easy navigation should be.

 

Hijack #10: Forecasting Errors, “Foot in the Door” strategies

  

Facebook promises an easy choice to “See Photo.” Would we still click if it gave the true price tag?

People don’t intuitively forecast the true cost of a click when it’s presented to them. Sales people use “foot in the door” techniques by asking for a small innocuous request to begin with (“just one click”), and escalating from there (“why don’t you stay awhile?”). Virtually all engagement websites use this trick.

 

Imagine if web browsers and smartphones, the gateways through which people make these choices, were truly watching out for people and helped them forecast the consequences of clicks (based on real data about what it actually costs most people?).

 

That’s why I add “Estimated reading time” to the top of my posts. When you put the “true cost” of a choice in front of people, you’re treating your users or audience with dignity and respect.

 

In a Time Well Spent internet, choices would be framed in terms of projected cost and benefit, so people were empowered to make informed choices.

  

TripAdvisor uses a “foot in the door” technique by asking for a single click review (“How many stars?”) while hiding the three page form behind the click.

Summary And How We Can Fix This

 

Are you upset that technology is hijacking your agency? I am too. I’ve listed a few techniques but there are literally thousands. Imagine whole bookshelves, seminars, workshops and trainings that teach aspiring tech entrepreneurs techniques like this. They exist.

 

The ultimate freedom is a free mind, and we need technology to be on our team to help us live, feel, think and act freely.

 

We need our smartphones, notifications screens and web browsers to be exoskeletons for our minds and interpersonal relationships that put our values, not our impulses, first. People’s time is valuable. And we should protect it with the same rigor as privacy and other digital rights.

 

Tristan Harris was Product Philosopher at Google until 2016 where he studied how technology affects a billion people’s attention, wellbeing and behavior.

 

For more information and get involved, check out timewellspent.io. This piece is cross-posted on Medium.

  

MARCH 7, 2016 by TRISTAN HARRIS

Tech Companies Design Your Life, Here’s Why You Should Care

 

UNCATEGORIZED

5 COMMENTS

 

Four years ago, I sold my company to Google and joined the ranks there. I spent my last three years there as Product Philosopher, looking at the profound ways the design of screens shape billions of human lives – and asking what it means for them to do so ethically and responsibly.

 

What I came away with is that something’s not right with how our screens are designed, and I’m writing this to help you understand why you should care, and what you can do about it.

 

I shouldn’t have to cite statistics about the central role screens play in our lives. Billions of us turn to smartphones every day. We wake up with them. We fall asleep with them. You’re looking at one right now.

 

Of course, new technologies always reshape society, and it’s always tempting to worry about them solely for this reason. Socrates worried that the technology of writing would “create forgetfulness in the learners’ souls, because they [would] not use their memories.” We worried that newspapers would make people stop talking to each other on the subway. We worried that we would use television to “amuse ourselves to death.”

 

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“And see!” people say. “Nothing bad happened!” Isn’t humanity more prosperous, more technically sophisticated, and better connected than ever? Is it really that big of a problem that people spend so much time staring at their smartphones? Isn’t it just another cultural shift, like all the others? Won’t we just adapt?

 

Invisibility of the New Normal

 

I don’t think so. What’s missing from this perspective is that all these technologies (books, television, radio, newspapers) did change everything about society, we just don’t see it. They replaced our old menus of choices with new ones. Each new menu eventually became the new normal – “the way things are” – and, after our memories of old menus had faded into the past, the new menus became “the way things have always been.”

 

gold-fish-in-waterASK A FISH ABOUT WATER AND THEY’LL RESPOND, “WHAT’S WATER?”

Consider that the average American now watches more than 5.5 hours of television per day. Regardless of whether you think TV is good or bad, hundreds of millions of people spend 30% of their waking hours watching it. It’s hard to overstate the vast consequences of this shift– for the blood flows of millions of people, for our understanding of reality, for the relational habits of families, for the strategies and outcomes of political campaigns. Yet for those who live with them day-to-day, they are invisible.

 

So what best describes the nature of what smart phones are “doing” to us?

 

A New “Perfect” Choice on Life’s Menu

 

If I had to summarize it, it’s this: Our phone puts a new choice on life’s menu, in any moment, that’s “sweeter” than reality.

 

If, at any moment, reality gets dull or boring, our phone offers something more pleasurable, more productive and even more educational than whatever reality gives us.

 

And this new choice fits into any moment. Our phone offers 5-second choices like “checking email” that feel better than waiting in line. And it offers 30-minute choices like a podcast that will teach you that thing you’ve been dying to learn, which feels better than a 30-minute walk in silence.

 

Once you see your phone this way, wouldn’t you turn to it more often? It always happens this way: when new things fill our needs better than the old, we switch:

 

When cheaper, faster to prepare food appears, we switch: Packaged foods.

When more accurate search engines appear, we switch: Google.

When cheaper, faster forms of transportation appear, we switch: Uber.

756612-b6f6919a-555a-11e3-b451-c2835887c2f5

 

So it goes with phones.

 

But it also changes us on the inside. We grow less and less patient for reality as it is, especially when it’s boring or uncomfortable. We come to expect more from the world, more rapidly. And because reality can’t live up to our expectations, it reinforces how often we want to turn to our screens. A self-reinforcing feedback loop.

 

And because of the attention economy, every product will only get more persuasive over time. Facebook must become more persuasive if it wants to compete with YouTube and survive. YouTube must become more persuasive if it wants to compete with Facebook. And we’re not just talking about ‘cheap’ amusement (aka cat videos). These products will only get better at giving us choices that make every bone in our body say, “yeah I want that!”

 

So what’s wrong about this? If the entire attention economy is working to fill us up with more perfect-feeling things to spend time on, which outcompete being with the discomfort of ourselves or our surroundings, shouldn’t that be fantastic?

 

wall-e

 

Clearly something is missing from this picture. But what is it?

 

Maybe it’s that “filling people up,” even with incredible choices on screens somehow doesn’t add up to a life well lived. Or that those choices weren’t what we wished we’d been persuaded to do in the bigger sense of our lives.

 

With design as it is today, screens threaten our fundamental agency. Maybe we are “choosing,” but we are choosing from persuasive menus driven by companies who have different goals than ours.

 

And that begs us to ask, “what are our goals?” or how do we want to spend our time? There are as many “good lives” as there are people, but our technology (and the attention economy) don’t really seem on our team to give us the agency to live according to them.

 

A Whole New Persuasive World

 

And it’s about to get a lot worse. Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality will offer whole new immersive realities that are even more persuasive than physical reality.

 

zuck-virtual-reality

 

When you could have sex with the person of your dreams, or fly through jungles in the Amazon rainforest while looking over at your best friend flying next to you, who would want to stick with reality?

 

By the way, this isn’t your usual “look, VR is coming!” prediction. This is the real deal. Facebook recently spent $2 billion to buy Oculus Rift, and hopes to put them in every home for this holiday season. Just like the late 1980’s when suddenly everyone you knew had a Nintendo.

 

Acknowledging the Problem

 

So we have a fundamental misalignment– between what the attention economy is competing to produce (more perfect, persuasive choices that fit into any moment), the design of our phones, and the aspirations people have for their lives (their definition of “the good life”).

 

AttentionEconomyMisalignment

 

So what’s missing from the design of our phones? I like to use the metaphor of ergonomics. When you think of ergonomics, you might think of boring things like how a cup fits into someone’s hand, but it’s way more than that.

 

If regular design is about how we want things to work, ergonomics is concerned with failure modes and extremes: how things break under repetition, stress or other limits. And the goal of ergonomics is to create an alignment between those limits, and the goals people have for how they want to use it.

 

10 Handle diameter

 

For example, an ergonomically designed coffee mug aligns the natural fatigue of forearm muscles during use (as a person “lifts” it to sip) with how frequently people want to use it, so they still can lift it successfully with repetition.

 

What does this have to do with phones?

 

Our minds urgently need a new “ergonomics,” based on the mind’s limited capacities, biases, fatigue curves and the ways it forms habits. The attention economy tears our minds apart. With its onslaught of never-ending choices, never-ending supply of relationships and obligations, the attention economy bulldozes the natural shape of our physical and psychological limits and turns impulses into bad habits.

 

Just like the food industry manipulates our innate biases for salt, sugar and fat with perfectly engineered combinations, the tech industry bulldozes our innate biases for Social Reciprocity (we’re built to get back to others), Social Approval (we’re built to care what others think of us), Social Comparison (how we’re doing with respect to our peers) and Novelty-seeking (we’re built to seek surprises over the predictable).

 

Millions of years of evolution did a great job giving us genes to care about how others perceive us. But Facebook bulldozes those biases, by forcing us to deal with how thousands of people perceive us.

 

This isn’t to say that phones today aren’t designed ergonomically, they are just ergonomic to a narrow scope of goals:

 

for a single user (holding the phone)

for single tasks (opening an app)

for individual choices

And a narrow scope of human physical limits:

 

how far our thumb has to reach to tap an app

how loud the phone must vibrate for our ear to hear it

So what if we expanded the scope of ergonomics for a more holistic set of human goals:

 

a holistic sense of a person

a holistic sense of how they want to spend their time (and goals)

a holistic sense of their relationships (interpersonal & social choices)

an ability to make holistic choices (including opportunity costs & externalities)

an ability to reflect, before and after

…and what if we aligned these goals with a more holistic set of our mental, social and emotional limits?

 

A New Kind of Ergonomics

 

Let’s call this new kind of ergonomics “Holistic Ergonomics”. Holistic Ergonomics recognizes our holistic mental and emotional limits [vulnerabilities, fatigue and ways our minds form habits] and aligns them with the holistic goals we have for our lives (not just the single tasks). Holistic Ergonomics is built to give us back agency in an increasingly persuasive attention economy.

 

Joe Edelman and I have taught design workshops on this, calling it EmpoweringDesign.org, or designing to empower people’s agency.

 

It includes an interpersonal ergonomics, to “align” our social psychological instincts with how and when we want to make ourselves available to others (like in my TED talk), so that we can reclaim agency over how we want to relate to others.

 

Just like an ergonomic coffee mug is safe to live by, even under repetition, over and over again, without causing harm to ourselves or others, in a Time Well Spent world our phones would be designed with Holistic Ergonomics, so that even under repetition, over and over again, our phones do not cause harm to ourselves or others — our phones become safe to live by. They support our Agency.

 

How to Change the Game

 

Android.Apple_.001

 

Right now, two companies are responsible for the primary screens that a billion people live by. Apple and Google make the two dominant smartphone platforms. Facebook and Microsoft make leading Virtual and Augmented Reality platforms, Oculus and Hololens.

 

You might think that it’s against the business models of Apple and Google to facilitate people’s agency, which might include making it easier to spend time off the screen, and use apps less. But it’s not.

 

Apple and Google, like all companies, respond to what consumers demand.

 

When Privacy became important to you, they responded. They developed new privacy and security features, and it sparked a whole new public conversation and debate. It’s now the most popular concern about technology discussed in media.

 

When Organic food became important to you, they responded too. Walmart added it to their stores.

 

We need to do the same thing with this issue. Until now, with this experience of distraction, social media, and this vague sense that we don’t feel good when we use our phones for too long, there’s been nothing to rally behind. It’s too diffuse. We receive so many incredible benefits from tech, but we’ve also been feeling like we’ve been losing ourselves, and our humanity?

 

But we’re naming it now.

 

What’s at stake is our Agency. Our ability to live the lives we want to live, choose the way we want to choose, and relate to others the way we want to relate to them – through technology. This is a design problem, not just a personal responsibility problem.

 

If you want your Agency, you need to tell these companies that that’s what you want from them– not just another shiny new phone that overloads our psychological vulnerabilities. Tell them you want your Agency back, and to help you spend your time the way you want to, and they will respond.

 

I hope this helps spark that bigger conversation.

 

www.tristanharris.com/essays/

Honevo Photography

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How many biplanes can claim a jet fighter among their victims in an air-to-air engagement? The Polikarpov Po-2 can (see below).

 

Designed as a replacement for the British-designed Avro 504 in Russian training units, it served as a general-purpose Soviet biplane, nicknamed Kukuruznik (from Russian "kukuruza" for maize; thus, "maize duster" or "crop duster"), NATO reporting name Mule.

 

The reliable, uncomplicated concept of the Po-2's design made it an ideal training aircraft, as well as doubling as a low-cost ground-attack, aerial reconnaissance, psychological warfare and liaison aircraft during war, proved to be one of the most versatile light combat types to be built in the Soviet Union.

 

As of 1978 it remained in production for a longer period of time than any other Soviet-era aircraft. More than 40,000 Po-2s may have been built between 1928 and 1953, although this total needs confirmation. Low-rate production by small repair shops and air clubs likely continued until 1959.

 

North Korean forces used the Po-2 in the Korean War, inflicting serious damage during night raids on Allied bases.

 

UN forces named the Po-2's night-time appearance Bedcheck Charlie and had great difficulty in shooting it down - even though night fighters had radar as standard equipment in the 1950s, the wood-and-fabric-construction of the Po-2 gave only a minimal radar echo, making it hard for an opposing fighter pilot to acquire his target. On 16 June 1953, a USMC AD-4 from VMC-1 piloted by Major George H Linnemeier and CWO Vernon S Kramer shot down a Po-2, the only documented Skyraider air victory of the war.

 

And that jet fighter mentioned above? Well, one Lockheed F-94 Starfire jet fighter was lost while slowing to 110 mph during an intercept of a Po-2 biplane; maybe not shot down, but I'll bet the Po-2 pilot claimed it. - all details from various Wikipedia pages.

 

This example is in a Soviet Air Force colour scheme at the Shuttleworth Collection and is seen at the end of its display during the Collection's 50th Anniversary Air Show at Old Warden Aerodrome in Bedfordshire.

The Crocjaw is a prototype psychological warfare mecha. It would be used in low light and would participate in rapid raids. It is equipped with a variety of cosmetic additions, including large, sharp teeth and claws. The mecha's jaw moved up and down, and have speakers that emit a terrifying roar upon command (the pilot and surrounding support crew are encouraged to wear protective ear wear). A flamethrower and rifle come standard.

The Crocjaw was displayed at the annual Warfare Expo, but the prototype plans were stolen shortly thereafter...

  

Gallery.

Yes, the jaws really open.

Alice in Wonderland contains many animals, more than I have mentioned. Those I have mentioned, however, make clear the fact that Alice honors the animals by endowing them with consciousness equal to that of humans. Her interaction with animals and nature are manifestations of what Lévy-Bruhl calls participation mystique, a quality Alice shares with aboriginal peoples and one which adults with their ego-consciousness have lost. “The third exclusion,” Hannah writes, “is perhaps the worst from the psychological point of view, because it has prevented man from recognizing his own shadow. It consists in the exclusion of the inferior man.” It is Eros, “relationship,” that “the Church condemned as sinful” (ibid. 151). The sadistic cruelty shown, for example, in the poem, “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” in which the title characters befriend, then eat, the Oysters, reveals the shadow archetype which Western civilization needs to accommodate. The Freudian interpretations of Alice, in so far as they are valid, compensate for the Church’s denial of sexuality and the relatedness (the “Eros”) it needs. I agree with Bloomingdale that it is Alice’s “capacity for compassion that distinguishes Alice the Queen. . . . Love is the golden crown that makes Alice the true Queen of Hearts” (390). The last exclusion or “repression” Hannah cites is of “creative fantasy . . . [which] if . . . given full freedom . . . will probably lead the individual to find a divine spark in himself.” Although the Church, Hannah notes, has “apparently little influence nowadays,” it certainly had more influence in the last century (and Church here means Christianity in general, not Christ himself or any one denomination). Its negative influence today can be observed in the efforts by some to write discrimination against the marriage rights of gays and lesbians into the Constitution. Writing for children, Carroll was able to abandon his own prudery and give free reign to what was actually a new genre he and Edward Lear were creating simultaneously. Hannah reports that Jung, referring to his own Symbols of Transformation, described two kinds of thinking: “intellectual or directed thinking and fantastic thinking” (100). These are exactly the kinds of thinking that went into the writing of Alice in Wonderland. The happy balance of the two make it a classic which continues to appeal to collective needs in Western culture. Hannah further notes the fact that Jung liked to quote Schopenhauer, who said: “A sense of humor is the only divine quality of man” (40), and in that sense Alice in Wonderland is truly divine.

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (commonly shortened to Alice in Wonderland) is an 1865 novel written by English author Charles Lutwidge Dodgson under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll. It tells of a girl named Alice falling through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world populated by peculiar, anthropomorphic creatures. The tale plays with logic, giving the story lasting popularity with adults as well as with children. It is considered to be one of the best examples of the literary nonsense genre. Its narrative course and structure, characters and imagery have been enormously influential in both popular culture and literature, especially in the fantasy genre.Like most works of entertainment- there is a message to be found beneath the surface. Themes of occult initiation, altered states, Nihilism, and even MKULTRA child abuse can be found if you look hard enough at Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. Of all Victorian children’s stories that are enjoyed equally by children and adults, none is more popular than Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1872).1 More than any other piece of literature written for children during the Victorian period, Alice in Wonderland (as the tales together are generally called) has spawned a seemingly never-ending academic industry; and, although Carroll also wrote other children’s books (The Hunting of the Snark (1876) and the Sylvie and Bruno books (1889 and 1893) are the most notable), the interest in the Alice books far outweighs the interest in the other books. Alice in Wonderland has been analyzed from virtually all critical points of view.2 The Freudian approach has been applied many times, starting at least as early as 1933 with a piece by A. M. E. Goldschmidt (see Phillips, Aspects of Alice 279-82). Carroll himself receives the Freudian treatment in Phyllis Greenacre’s Swift and Carroll: A Psychoanalytic Study of Two Lives (1955). The Jungian approach, too, has been tried on Alice in an article called “Alice as Anima : The Image of Woman in Carroll’s Classic,” published in Aspects of Alice . Although much that Judith Bloomingdale says is on the mark, she is not convincing in making Alice the anima. Alice may be, for Carroll, an incipient image of the anima, but she is far more, as Bloomingdale herself demonstrates and as I hope my own analysis will show.3 One Freudian critic goes so far as to declare: “It is impossible to gain conscious understanding of the life of Lewis Carroll or of the meaning of his written fantasy unless a psychoanalytic approach is used” (Skinner 293). Although much nonsense has been written using the psychoanalytic approach, the approach itself is valid. At the same time, it leaves many psychological issues unexplored. In “The Spiritual Problem of Modern Man,” Jung writes: “If anything of importance is devalued in our conscious life, and perishes--so runs the law--there arises a compensation in the unconscious” (86). Jungian criticism attempts to account for the collective appeal of a classic like Alice in Wonderland. It asks, For what that is lacking in the contemporary collective psyche does the work compensate? An account for such appeal or compensation cannot be entirely provided by an examination of the author’s life, however provocative and interesting that life is--and Carroll’s life is certainly an interesting case study. First generation Jungians like Marie-Louise von Franz (in Puer Aeternus ) and Barbara Hannah (in Striving Towards Wholeness ) do examine in tandem the lives and works of literary artists, but Jung himself warned against the “reduction of art to personal factors.” Such a reduction “deflects our attention from the psychology of the work of art and focuses it on the psychology of the artist . . . the work of art exists in its own right and cannot be got rid of by changing it into a personal complex” (“Psychology and Literature” 93). In other words, the work of art is independent of and greater than its creator. It may tell us much about the artist, but ultimately, if it is to endure, its appeal must be collective--“visionary,” to use Jung’s term (ibid. 89). Having said this, I must add that a brief examination of Carroll’s life can provide clues as to how he was uniquely suited to produce his classic. Like Edward Lear, Carroll in some respects fits the profile of the puer aeternus as outlined by von Franz in Puer Aeternus. He seems to have had a mother complex; further, as one Carroll scholar states, he had a “reluctance to commit himself, to become in any way tied down” (Gattégno 215), and this is another puer trait. As a puer aeternus, Carroll had “a certain kind of spirituality which comes from a relatively close contact with the collective unconscious” (von Franz 4); Carroll was ordained a deacon, albeit he never became a priest.

Stephen Prickett points out some surface similarities between Lear and Carroll: Both were shy and sensitive bachelors; both were afraid of dogs both were of an ‘analytic state of mind’--Carroll indexed his entire correspondence, which, by his death had 98,000 cross-references. Both were marginal kinds of men, if in very different senses. (130) Like many of the authors whose work I have examined, both Lear and Carroll are social outsiders. Although both shared some of the same friends (among them some of the Pre-Raphaelites and the Tennysons), no one has found any record of either man referring to the other, though both pioneered the nonsense genre.4 Both were visual artists. Carroll’s photography and drawing were avocations, whereas Lear’s paintings provided his livelihood and he illustrated his own books, as Carroll did not. Unlike Lear and the typical puer, Carroll hardly ever traveled abroad (he made one trip to the Continent in his lifetime). And he was different from the typical puer as described by von Franz in that he was neither a homosexual, so far as we know, nor a Don Juan. Lear was a homosexual. Carroll, on the other hand, was a heterosexual pedophile who “collected” little girls like so many dolls and who lost his stammer in their presence. A famous photographer, Carroll abruptly gave up photography in 1880 after having practiced the art for some twenty-four years. He gave no explanation, but one reason may have been gossip about and resistance to his photographing pre-pubescent girls in the nude. After 1880 he continued drawing them in the nude (Clark 208). His nephew and first biographer, Stuart Dodgson Collingwood, records that Carroll “always took about with him a stock of puzzles when he travelled, to amuse any little [female] companions [he detested little boys] whom chance might send him” (407). To pretend that Carroll’s predilections were not in part sexual is extremely naïve (see Gattégno 82 and Greenacre 245-46). Carroll’s sexual orientation provided a powerful motive for his creative work. His remaining child-like as an adult also gave him entrée into the psyche of the child. Moreover, he had, like Lear, a nature somewhat akin to the Native American berdache. In his inventions of puzzles, riddles, and games, in his visual art, in his appeal to children, and indeed in his name-giving function (both for himself and for such characters as Jabberwocky and the Bandersnatch), Carroll fulfilled the role of the berdache. The adult Carroll disapproved of “transvestite parts [in the theater], though only when it involved a man’s being dressed as a woman” (Gattégno 226), but at about the age of seventeen or eighteen he drew a curious picture as the frontispiece to a family magazine called The Rectory. The Rectory Umbrella shows a bearded man with an almost Cheshire-cat grin lying down on one elbow. He is dressed, as Greenacre points out, as “a little girl, the skirt suggesting the appearance of a closed umbrella” (131). He’s holding an umbrella on which are the words “Tales, Poetry, Fun, Riddles, Jokes.” Overhead, six little sexless imps are trying to rain down chunks of “Woe, Spite, Ennui, Gloom, Crossness, and Alloverishness.” Rushing through the air and to the safety under the umbrella are seven female fairies bringing “Liveliness, Knowledge, Good Humour, Taste, Cheerfulness, Content, and Mirth” (Greenacre 130-31). The cross-dressed man’s resemblance to the berdache in this drawing is striking, all the more so because it is no doubt unconscious.

 

Chapter One – Down the Rabbit Hole: Alice, a girl of seven years, is feeling bored and drowsy while sitting on the riverbank with her elder sister. She then notices a talking, clothed White Rabbit with a pocket watch run past. She follows it down a rabbit hole when suddenly she falls a long way to a curious hall with many locked doors of all sizes. She finds a small key to a door too small for her to fit through, but through it she sees an attractive garden. She then discovers a bottle on a table labelled "DRINK ME," the contents of which cause her to shrink too small to reach the key which she has left on the table. She eats a cake with "EAT ME" written on it in currants as the chapter closes. "Down the Rabbit-Hole", in the midst of shrinking, Alice waxes philosophic concerning what final size she will end up as, perhaps "going out altogether, like a candle"; this pondering reflects the concept of a limitThe White Rabbit is one of the most iconic characters and is affiliated with Alice in Wonderland, in each depiction. Hopping speedily away, he is first introduced to Alice before she falls down the hole into Wonderland. Carrying his clock, pointing hastily with worry in his eyes, the white rabbit draws Alice in because he believes she is the one to defeat the Red Queen.

A lot of people suffer with anxiety, so this “diagnosis” could be considered easy to detect. GAD can cause twitching, restlessness, insomnia, and agitation to name just few of the many symptoms, all of which the white rabbit exude. Nervous that he has brought the wrong Alice to Wonderland and that the Red Queen will prevail, the white rabbit is especially anxious.

 

Chapter Two – The Pool of Tears: Chapter Two opens with Alice growing to such a tremendous size her head hits the ceiling. Alice is unhappy and, as she cries, her tears flood the hallway. After shrinking down again due to a fan she had picked up, Alice swims through her own tears and meets a Mouse, who is swimming as well. She tries to make small talk with him in elementary French (thinking he may be a French mouse) but her opening gambit "Où est ma chatte?" ("Where is my cat?") offends the mouse and he tries to escape her "The Pool of Tears", Alice tries to perform multiplication but produces some odd results: "Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is—oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate!" This explores the representation of numbers using different bases and positional numeral systems: 4 × 5 = 12 in base 18 notation, 4 × 6 = 13 in base 21 notation, and 4 × 7 could be 14 in base 24 notation. Continuing this sequence, going up three bases each time, the result will continue to be less than 20 in the corresponding base notation. (After 4 × 12 = 19 in Base 39, the product would be 4 × 13 = 1A in Base 42, then 1B, 1C, 1D, and so on.)

 

Chapter Three – The Caucus Race and a Long Tale: The sea of tears becomes crowded with other animals and birds that have been swept away by the rising waters. Alice and the other animals convene on the bank and the question among them is how to get dry again. The Mouse gives them a very

dry lecture on William the Conqueror. A Dodo decides that the best thing to dry them off would be a Caucus-Race, which consists of everyone running in a circle with no clear winner. Alice eventually frightens all the animals away, unwittingly, by talking about her (moderately ferocious) cat.

 

Chapter Four – The Rabbit Sends a Little Bill: The White Rabbit appears again in search of the Duchess's gloves and fan. Mistaking her for his maidservant, Mary Ann, he orders Alice to go into the house and retrieve them, but once she gets inside she starts growing. The horrified Rabbit orders his gardener, Bill the Lizard, to climb on the roof and go down the chimney. Outside, Alice hears the voices of animals that have gathered to gawk at her giant arm. The crowd hurls pebbles at her, which turn into little cakes. Alice eats them, and they reduce her again in size.

 

Chapter Five – Advice from a Caterpillar: Alice comes upon a mushroom and sitting on it is a blue Caterpillar smoking a hookah. The Caterpillar questions Alice and she admits to her current identity crisis, compounded by her inability to remember a poem. Before crawling away, the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of the mushroom will make her taller and the other side will make her shorter. She breaks off two pieces from the mushroom. One side makes her shrink smaller than ever, while another causes her neck to grow high into the trees, where a pigeon mistakes her for a serpent. With some effort, Alice brings herself back to her normal height. She stumbles upon a small estate and uses the mushroom to reach a more appropriate height.

 

Chapter Six – Pig and Pepper: A Fish-Footman has an invitation for the Duchess of the house, which he delivers to a Frog-Footman. Alice observes this transaction and, after a perplexing conversation with the frog, lets herself into the house. The Duchess's Cook is throwing dishes and making a soup that has too much pepper, which causes Alice, the Duchess, and her baby (but not the cook or grinning Cheshire Cat) to sneeze violently. Alice is given the baby by the Duchess and to her surprise, the baby turns into a pig. The Cheshire Cat appears in a tree, directing her to the March Hare's house. He disappears but his grin remains behind to float on its own in the air prompting Alice to remark that she has often seen a cat without a grin but never a grin without a cat.

 

Chapter Seven – A Mad Tea-Party: Alice becomes a guest at a "mad" tea party along with the March Hare, the Hatter, and a very tired Dormouse who falls asleep frequently, only to be violently woken up moments later by the March Hare and the Hatter. The characters give Alice many riddles and stories, including the famous 'Why is a raven like a writing desk?'. The Hatter reveals that they have tea all day because Time has punished him by eternally standing still at 6 pm (tea time). Alice becomes insulted and tired of being bombarded with riddles and she leaves claiming that it was the stupidest tea party that she had ever been to. "A Mad Tea-Party", the March Hare, the Hatter, and the Dormouse give several examples in which the semantic value of a sentence A is not the same value of the converse of A (for example, "Why, you might just as well say that 'I see what I eat' is the same thing as 'I eat what I see'!"); in logic and mathematics, this is discussing an inverse relationship.

Also in chapter 7, Alice ponders what it means when the changing of seats around the circular table places them back at the beginning. This is an observation of addition on the ring of integers modulo N.

The Cheshire cat fades until it disappears entirely, leaving only its wide grin, suspended in the air, leading Alice to marvel and note that she has seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. Deep abstraction of concepts, such as non-Euclidean geometry, abstract algebra, and the beginnings of mathematical logic, was taking over mathematics at the time Dodgson was writing. Dodgson's delineation of the relationship between cat and grin can be taken to represent the very concept of mathematics and number itself. For example, instead of considering two or three apples, one may easily consider the concept of 'apple', upon which the concepts of 'two' and 'three' may seem to depend. A far more sophisticated jump is to consider the concepts of 'two' and 'three' by themselves, just like a grin, originally seemingly dependent on the cat, separated conceptually from its physical object.

Chapter Eight – The Queen's Croquet Ground: Alice leaves the tea party and enters the garden where she comes upon three living playing cards painting the white roses on a rose tree red because The Queen of Hearts hates white roses. A procession of more cards, kings and queens and even the White Rabbit enters the garden. Alice then meets the King and Queen. The Queen, a figure difficult to please, introduces her trademark phrase "Off with his head!" which she utters at the slightest dissatisfaction with a subject. Alice is invited (or some might say ordered) to play a game of croquet with the Queen and the rest of her subjects but the game quickly descends into chaos. Live flamingos are used as mallets and hedgehogs as balls and Alice once again meets the Cheshire Cat. The Queen of Hearts then orders the Cat to be beheaded, only to have her executioner complain that this is impossible since the head is all that can be seen of him. Because the cat belongs to the Duchess, the Queen is prompted to release the Duchess from prison to resolve the matter.

 

Chapter Nine – The Mock Turtle's Story: The Duchess is brought to the croquet ground at Alice's request. She ruminates on finding morals in everything around her. The Queen of Hearts dismisses her on the threat of execution and she introduces Alice to the Gryphon, who takes her to the Mock Turtle. The Mock Turtle is very sad, even though he has no sorrow. He tries to tell his story about how he used to be a real turtle in school, which the Gryphon interrupts so they can play a game.

 

Chapter Ten – Lobster Quadrille: The Mock Turtle and the Gryphon dance to the Lobster Quadrille, while Alice recites (rather incorrectly) "'Tis the Voice of the Lobster". The Mock Turtle sings them "Beautiful Soup" during which the Gryphon drags Alice away for an impending trial.

 

Chapter Eleven – Who Stole the Tarts?: Alice attends a trial whereby the Knave of Hearts is accused of stealing the Queen's tarts. The jury is composed of various animals, including Bill the Lizard, the White Rabbit is the court's trumpeter, and the judge is the King of Hearts. During the proceedings, Alice finds that she is steadily growing larger. The dormouse scolds Alice and tells her she has no right to grow at such a rapid pace and take up all the air. Alice scoffs and calls the dormouse's accusation ridiculous because everyone grows and she cannot help it. Meanwhile, witnesses at the trial include the Hatter, who displeases and frustrates the King through his indirect answers to the questioning, and the Duchess's cook.

 

Chapter Twelve – Alice's Evidence: Alice is then called up as a witness. She accidentally knocks over the jury box with the animals inside them and the King orders the animals be placed back into their seats before the trial continues. The King and Queen order Alice to be gone, citing Rule 42 ("All persons more than a mile high to leave the court"), but Alice disputes their judgement and refuses to leave. She argues with the King and Queen of Hearts over the ridiculous proceedings, eventually refusing to hold her tongue. The Queen shouts her familiar "Off with her head!" but Alice is unafraid, calling them out as just a pack of cards; just as they start to swarm over her. Alice's sister wakes her up from a dream, brushing what turns out to be some leaves and not a shower of playing cards from Alice's face. Alice leaves her sister on the bank to imagine all the curious happenings for herself.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Adventures_in_Wonderland

Grenfell. The roaming of the local Aboriginal people became curtailed from 1833 when the first white pastoralist moved into the Grenfell district. He was John Wood squatting beyond the legal areas. It was one of Wood’s shepherds who discovered gold in 1866. He was named Cornelius O’Brien and he registered the find in Young and took out a miners lease. O’Brien went on to sell his lease in 1872 for £32,000 and his mine yielded £370,000 worth of gold over the first five years. Diggers rushed to the area in 1866, many from Lambing Flat fields (Young), when news was released and a settlement named Emu Creek sprang up overnight. On 1st January 1867 the goldfields were renamed Grenfell in honour of John Grenfell the Gold Commissioner of nearby Forbes who was killed by bushrangers in a hold up on 6th December 1866. Before then the Weddin Post Office opened at Emu Creek on 3rd December 1866 and it was changed to Grenfell PO on December 24th. The Weddin Ranges lie just to the west of Grenfell and the shire council is still the Weddin Shire. Thus the first part of Grenfell developed along the curves of Emu Creek as the fields soon had around 20,000 diggers. Buildings - hotels, dance hall and theatres, mainly canvas or wooden in the early years, crowded along the narrow George Street which was the original heart of the town. There were soon 33 licensed hotels in Grenfell. But several major fires destroyed many of the cramped buildings. Today George Street is just a narrow backstreet and the Main Street is the area of commerce, but still with a dogleg curve. The goldfield at Grenfell was a rich one but it provided its bounty for only a short time. Between 1867 and 1869 Grenfell produced over 40,000 ounces (1,100 kilograms) of gold worth over three million pounds. A few buildings of note remain in George Street despite their faded appearance and they include the Oddfellows Hall. The first one was built in 1873 and was replaced with the current building in 1888. Next to it is the old printer’s works. The Mining Record was published from 1866 (marked on the building) but became the Grenfell Record in 1875 when the new owner moved the premises to the Main Street next to the Exchange Hotel.

 

Among the early gold miners to rush the fields was a Norwegian digger Niels Larsen. On 17th June 1867 Larsen’s wife gave birth in their tent to a baby who they named Henry changing their surname to Lawson at the same time. WE do not know but Lawson built a slab hut so Henry could have been born in that. His mother Louisa made meals and sold them to the diggers for income. Niels Lawson soon moved his family to Mudgee and that is where Henry Lawson spent most of his childhood. For some years young Henry travelled the country out west doing sheep farming work with his father which gave him later inspiration for his outback stories. In 1883 Henry Lawson went to live in Sydney with his mother. Louisa established a suffragette paper for women called Dawn. She had her own printing press and Henry Lawson’s first short stories and prose were printed by his mother. His mother, with Peter Bell, printed the radical journal called the Republican. By this time she had separated from Henry’s father. Henry accepted a newspaper job in Brisbane in 1891. His first story in the Bulletin was published in 1888. By the mid-1890s Henry had taken up drinking. Despite travel and writing and several bouts of depression he persisted with life. After his wife Bertha separated from him in 1920 he took up drinking again and attempted suicide after which he entered a deep depression and downhill slide psychologically. He died alone in 1922. Although Henry Lawson did not spent much of his life in Grenfell the site where the slab hut was built the site was recorded and dedicated in 1924 with Lawson’s wife and daughter attending the ceremony after Henry Lawson’s death. A tree was planted at the site at that time. Grenfell was early in its recognition of Lawson’s contribution to Australian literature and folklore. The town also established the Henry Lawson Festival, which is still held annually, in 1957 when few towns were thinking about attracting tourists to their regions or honouring their prominent citizens. The festival covers music, singing, poetry photography, writing, theatre etc. Lawson is commemorated on our ten dollar note.

 

Another literary figure with connections to Grenfell was Anthony Trollope, the famous English novelist and social critic and commentator. Trollope is best known for his series of novels called the Chronicles of Barsetshire (Barchester Towers) and 47 novels in all and several travel books. His social commentaries covered Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and North America. Trollope visited Grenfell twice in 1871 to visit his son Frederick who worked on a sheep station near Grenfell. He then travelled parts of QLD and NSW before visiting New Zealand. In total he spent 13 months in Australia and from it he wrote several books on Australia which were serialised in Australian newspapers. Fred Trollope’s ancestors still live in Australia and they have inherited the baronetcy of Casewick Hall from Anthony Trollope and it is currently held by Sir Anthony Trollope a school teacher in Sydney. Trollope accused Melbournians of being loud mouth braggarts but in Adelaide he stayed with Sir Thomas Elder at Birksgate and was dined at the Adelaide Club. Trollope’s acclaimed quotation on Adelaide was: “No city in Australia gives one more fixedly the idea that Australian colonization has been a success, than does the city of Adelaide”. His humour and irony were also evident in his quotes: “The number of sheep at these stations will generally indicate with fair accuracy the mode of life at the head station. A hundred thousand sheep and upwards require a professed man-cook and a butler to look after them; forty thousand sheep cannot be shorn without a piano; twenty thousand is the lowest number that renders napkins at dinner imperative.” And “Australian mosquitoes, of which I had heard much and which I feared greatly, were never so venomous to me as mosquitoes have been in other countries.” Or “The subject of heat is one of extreme delicacy… One does not allude to the heat in a host's house any more than to a bad bottle of wine or an ill-cooked joint of meat… You may call an inn hot, or a court-house, but not a gentleman's paddock or a lady's drawing-room.”

 

Although not a grand town Grenfell has charm and history. Big changes came to the town when wheat was first grown in the surrounding countryside from 1871 onwards but transport costs were a problem. A spur railway lime from Cowra reached Grenfell in 1901 and agriculture expanded. A flourmill was erected in the 1880s but when it burnt within a few years. It was replaced with the Challenge flourmill in 1901. That mill still stands although not in use. It produced flour only for our troops during the World War Two and it finally closed in the 1960s. The heritage buildings of Grenfell include the Courthouse (1879), the School of Arts (1890) and Wesleyan Church (1888) in Camp Street and the Anglican Church (1877) and Presbyterian Church (1870) in Middle Street etc.

 

Dissolve;

To cause to break down emotionally or psychologically.

 

5/6

Ancient prophets, Isaiah, Mohammed, Ezekiel, Moses, Saul (Paul) and Jesus were ‘ascended’ into craft, to later suffer psychological distress, having met “God, or the Devil and His Angels”. Ancient alien abductions recorded in the Old Testament, reflect ontological shock after superior beings with miraculous technology identified themselves as,”God”, worshipped by Hebrews who called the skies above, ‘Heaven’ Their technology still looks like magic to us, 5000 years after the Old Testament’s documented encounters with this,”God”. Modern abductees report that during their abductions onboard craft, they often see a frightening alien race. These beings radiate rage and hatred, and appear to be overlords of the many alien races who frequent the crossroads of Earth for salvage, and to abduct humans and these beings command and pilot UFOs. Small greys, who act in unison like robots, are work beings, designed and created and labeled,’synthetic work beings’. There are similar descriptions of these overlords: Muscular, winged, sentient, highly technological, upright standing to seven or eight feet tall, scaled reptilian beings, with webbing between their claws, who have yellow/red cat-like eyes, upright saurian ‘monitor lizards’, Mothmen, alien reptilians who looked upon us, as we fancied veal. That may completely explain the ‘God-ordered’ Kosher dietary laws; strictly control what human animals eat,( as we do with snails and Omaha beef) and you will make them more tasteful as an edible. At Bud Hopkins’ house, during Saturday evening meetings, I learned that abductees had also somehow gleaned what reptoids regular diets consisted of: human young. It was a chilling story I was to hear repeatedly, echoed elsewhere, like Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone” episode,”To Serve Man”, where our importance as a race in the Universe is that of a mere condiment. It reframed correctly, the true modus operandi behind this particular alien type and its ancient and continuing interaction/visitations with mankind. We were NOT the top of the food chain! Reading the O.T. Bible, again with alien-fresh eyes, even a non abductee can discern the elusive and controlling reptilian silhouette. Statue carvings of reptilians display the Mayan ‘God’ and Egyptian ‘God’ who created other similar “chosen people” sacrificial religions. This reptilian ‘God’, seated within a comparable “Holy of Holies”, in ancient Central America, was the centerpiece of power and evil, poised to eat and relish the Mayan God’s favorite dish, that of still beating human hearts.

This ‘God’ is the self-same demanding, controlling, punishing UFO ‘Heavenly’ “God” who insisted and demanded to the Hebrews that by ‘law’, much sacrificial blood be splashed on all four corners of His Altar.In the Garden of Eden tale, are clear reptilian fingerprints; alien advanced technological surgery (Adam put to sleep and a ‘rib’ removed for cloning and genetic manipulation) created a human-alien hybrid, the status of modern man and modern woman. Reptilians. horrid creatures. are completely in command of other alien subservient beings, aboard UFO craft and starships. Some wrongly and whimsically surmised about “God”, that pigs wrote the Bible, as half the world’s two major religions forbade the eating of swine… It is laughable, to us, today, that ancient human cultures throughout the ancient world wrongly mistook highly technological beings, who landed in craft, from the skies, as “God”, but the Mayans and Israelites were clearly and purposefully duped, by these beings. The impersonation, masquerade of ancient aliens as, “God”, helmeted and duped the world in the Old Testament .. God, our true spiritual father, is much too imbued within us, and within everything all around us, to be so easily discerned.

Religion, instead, is the bane.Gandhi said : ” I very much like your Christ , but not at all, your Christians”. There is a human unconscious remnant distant memory, of looking up, towards the stars for ‘God’. Earth, is the only planet, not named for a ‘God’. But God had nothing to do with an alien machine.

A closer look at the Ark of the Covenant, is more illuminating and revealing towards this realization of non-divine origins of the Old Testament; it was an object that breached the physical world of the Jews and the unseen paranormal world of the demanding “God” who had suddenly burst upon the scene.

 

Biblical evidence exists that the Ark of the Covenant was structurally designed as superior technology, acting as an alien transmitter-capacitor as well as a alien weapon.

 

The Ark, lethal when touched, was used to communicate with alien entities who masqueraded as “God”, who insisted a contrivance to be built, which would carry ‘God’s voice’, and aid Israelites when it was carried into battles: “And they shall make an Ark of shittim wood, two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. ‘And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold around and all about.” One of the Gold plates was positively charged and one was negatively charged and together they formed the condenser.

If one of the cherubim’s positioned above the Mercy Seat acted as a magnet, then one has the rudimentary requirements of a two way communication set. The ‘Lord’, this “God”, even detailed what clothing should be worn when consulting “God” through this Ark device, so that no interference would be encountered and to limit the risk of electrocution. This discussion shall follow, shortly. Further proof of the Ark’s innate communication function can be found in the First Book Of Samuel, Chapter 3:3, when the Ark directly speaks to Samuel: “And ere the lamp of God went out in the temple of the Lord, where the Ark of God was, and Samuel was laid to sleep. ‘That the Lord called Samuel, and he answered here am I. ‘And he ran unto Eli, and said here am I, for thou calledst me. And he said. I called not, lie down again. And he went and lay down”. This repeated itself on two more occasions and eventually Eli realized that the Lord was speaking to Samuel via the Ark, which he then told to Samuel, and on the fourth occasion Samuel was able to converse with the “Lord”, directly THROUGH this contrivance.The only persons in the house at the time were Eli and Samuel, and it is quite blatant that it was indeed the Ark which ‘spoke’ to Samuel.

 

This Ark , clearly an alien technological invention, beyond ancient man’s technological understanding, seems a most unseemly ‘tool’ for our true, good and all powerful, God of the Universe, who communicates through angels, coincidences and signs, dreams, infused insights, inspiration and telepathy.

The True spirit God does not need such mechanical contrivances and HE, is down a long hall and somewhere else, than in that “Book” that pretends to delineate and define God. This machine/ weapon technological artifice was an alien designed three-in-one communication device set, religious receptacle and weapon of mass destruction. The Ark had these three uses; at all times of communication with ‘God’ and at all times of great battles, the Ark was invariably present. Unfortunately, not everyone had the same opinion of the Ark as lethally divine in intent. David decided for safety’s sake, to ‘steal away with it’, with Uzzah’s help, with tragic consequences as retold in the second book of Samuel, Chapter 6: “And when they came to Nachons threshing-floor, Uzzah put forth his hand to the Ark of God, and took hold of it, for the oxen shook it. ‘And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah, and God smote him there for his error, and there he died by the Ark of God.” Quite clearly the Ark , carrying a massive electrical charge, killed Uzzah on the spot when he touched it. Theologians mince words. Why didn’t “the God of the Universe”, kill Uzzah for attempting to sequester the Ark at the outset; why did He have to wait until the Ark was actually touched? Because, to theologians, ‘God’, accurately described in the Hebrew Old Testament, was a crafty, manipulative, and completely masquerading alien. Regard this startling photo of a Sumerian ‘God’, worshipped and obeyed 7000 years before Abraham, Isaac and Moses, with much the same sacrificial orders.ood technology always looks just like magic to a primitive.Consider the WWII “Cargo Cults” that developed in the South Pacific when native islanders took our pilots and airmen for “Gods from the Sky.”When the war ended, these primitive peoples sought to incite the return of the “Sky Gods” by making facsimile airplane out of palm trees and fronds.

 

This Ark ‘contrivance’, from the UFO document of the Old Testament, reveals more about this ancient,’God’ who used the Ark as an alien technological tool to conduct this masquerade.Insights about this ‘God Machine’ reveal the reptilian alien fingerprint and its fuller silhouette, unfurled in Biblical descriptions, that yield eve more truths.

 

The Ark of the Covenant alien ordered to be built, was an ornate golden chest used for electrical radiation/ radio communication, to both hear from ‘God’ and to speak to “God”, and was additionally used as a terrible weapon against the enemies of the Israelites.In order to operate it safely, the high priest from the family of Kohath (of the tribe of Levi), who knew even more of its ‘secrets’, had to wear a breastplate with twelve sacred gemstones called ‘the Stones of Fire’, for his own physical protection.

 

The ‘holiest’ part of the Ark was called the ‘oracle’, the place where one could literally discern audible orders to Israel from “God”, which were almost totally made through Moses.

When Moses entered into the tabernacle of the covenant to consult with this ‘oracle’, he heard a voice speaking to him from the ‘propitiatory’, a sectional ‘speaker’ that was over the ark between the two cherubim, the wings of which acted as separate battery terminal poles. This is technology, not spirituality. Specific directives, given to Moses, would now come from “God”, through this machine : “Thence will I give orders, and will speak to thee over the propitiatory, and from the midst of these two cherubim, which shall be upon the Ark of the testimony, all things which I will command the children of Israel by thee”. Unlike orders given from a ‘ burning bush’, a disembodied voice in a laser of light focused upon a bush, all of “God’s” future orders came from this ‘burning’ box , an electronic technological contrivance. There was an intermittent appearance of a “cloud” between the cherubim and at these times the Ark machinery was considered so dangerous that Moses, himself, would not approach it. I am personally sure that the accompanying sharp smell of ozone, a characteristic smell of a modern powerful radio transmitter, filled the room, at such times, as well. A “fire” which emerged from the Ark of the testimony was preceded by a “glow” which the Bible describes as the “glory of the Lord”.The army that carried the Ark of the Covenant, before it, was invincible. Is mankind a simple ‘speck’ of import, in an endless and timeless Universe? We are a considerable, “speck”, given that we are created as a harvest-able crop farmed throughout the Universe, by the masters of our Universe, Draco reptilians, and thus very much someone else’s valuable property. Though we are no more than a condiment in reptoids menu, we are also imbued with a soul/spirit, by God, a soul/spirit that is also garnered by reptoids after our ‘death’ and recycled by them.Disclosure will NOT EVER, will NEVER happen, simply because humankind could never handle the dismal alien-human ‘truth’.We figure, spiritually and physically, for both elements of mankind are harvested (abducted) much more than a mere speck, but instead one of a prized simian creature useful for reptilian’s purposes who deluded mankind in a God masquerade that has blinded and helmeted Earth.Director of CIA, Admiral R.H. Hillenkoetter: “It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel.” p. 58, quoted from New York Times, February 28, 1960, p. L30

Paul Schroeder, September 25th, 2017 Brooklyn, NY

Two fiery jets allegedly issued from between the cherubim above the Ark, burning up snakes, scorpions, thorns, and enemies in the Israelites' path. Such legendary attributes of ... In his first book,Chariots of the Gods, he explained that he believed the Ark of the Covenant was an alien invention that was electrically charged.Thelidonthe Ark ofthe Covenant hadtwocherubim facing each other. There isnoindication that these cherubim were ever removed from the lid, anditis certain thatthelid was never removed. Even so, two large cherubim standing on the floor and spreading their wings over the Ark were placed in the Most Holy Place.

The Ark of the Covenant (Hebrew: אָרוֹן הַבְּרִית, Modern Arōn Ha'brēt Tiberian ʾĀrôn Habbərîṯ), also known as the Ark of the Testimony, is a gold-covered wooden chest with lid cover described in the Book of Exodus as containing the two stone tablets of the Ten Commandments. According to various texts within the Hebrew Bible, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna. The biblical account relates that, approximately one year after the Israelites' exodus from Egypt, the Ark was created according to the pattern given to Moses by God when the Israelites were encamped at the foot of biblical Mount Sinai. Thereafter, the gold-plated acacia chest was carried by its staves while en route by the Levites approximately 2,000 cubits (approximately 800 meters or 2,600 feet) in advance of the people when on the march or before the Israelite army, the host of fighting men. When carried, the Ark was always hidden under a large veil made of skins and blue cloth, always carefully concealed, even from the eyes of the priests and the Levites who carried it. God was said to have spoken with Moses "from between the two cherubim" on the Ark's cover.[3] When at rest the tabernacle was set up and the holy Ark was placed under the veil of the covering the staves of it crossing the middle side bars to hold it up off the ground.According to the Book of Exodus, God instructed Moses on Mount Sinai during his 40-day stay upon the mountain within the thick cloud and darkness where God was and he was shown the pattern for the tabernacle and furnishings of the Ark to be made of shittim wood to house the Tablets of Stone. Moses instructed Bezalel and Oholiab to construct the Ark. In Deuteronomy, however, the Ark is said to have been built specifically by Moses himself without reference of Bezalel or Oholiab. The Book of Exodus gives detailed instructions on how the Ark is to be constructed. It is to be 2½ cubits in length, 1½ in breadth, and 1½ in height (approximately 131×79×79 cm or 52×31×31 in). Then it is to be gilded entirely with gold, and a crown or molding of gold is to be put around it. Four rings of gold are to be attached to its four corners, two on each side—and through these rings staves of shittim-wood overlaid with gold for carrying the Ark are to be inserted; and these are not to be removed. A golden lid, the kapporet (traditionally "mercy seat" in Christian translations) which is covered with 2 golden cherubim, is to be placed above the Ark. Instructions missing from the biblical account include the thickness of the mercy seat, but instruct that the cherubim cover be beaten out the ends of it and details concerning the cherubim except that they form the space that God will appear. The Ark is finally to be placed under the veil of the covering.The biblical account continues that, after its creation by Moses, the Ark was carried by the Israelites during their 40 years of wandering in the desert. Whenever the Israelites camped, the Ark was placed in a separate room in a sacred tent, called the Tabernacle. When the Israelites, led by Joshua toward the Promised Land, arrived at the banks of the Jordan river, the Ark was carried in the lead preceding the people and was the signal for their advance (Joshua 3:3, 6). During the crossing, the river grew dry as soon as the feet of the priests carrying the Ark touched its waters, and remained so until the priests—with the Ark—left the river after the people had passed over (Josh. 3:15-17; 4:10, 11, 18). As memorials, twelve stones were taken from the Jordan at the place where the priests had stood (Josh. 4:1-9). In the Battle of Jericho, the Ark was carried round the city once a day for seven days, preceded by the armed men and seven priests sounding seven trumpets of rams' horns (Josh. 6:4-15). On the seventh day, the seven priests sounding the seven trumpets of rams' horns before the Ark compassed the city seven times and, with a great shout, Jericho's wall fell down flat and the people took the city (Josh. 6:16-20). After the defeat at Ai, Joshua lamented before the Ark (Josh. 7:6-9). When Joshua read the Law to the people between Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, they stood on each side of the Ark. We next hear of the Ark in Bethel where it was being cared for by the priest Phineas the grandson of Aaron (Judges 20:26f, where 'Bethel' is translated 'the House of God' in the King James Version). According to this verse it was consulted by the people of Israel when they were planning to attack the Benjaminites at the battle of Gibeah. Later, however, the Ark was kept at Shiloh, another religious centre some 10 miles north of Bethel, at the time of the prophet Samuel's apprenticeship (1 Samuel 3:3), where it was cared for by Hophni and Phinehas, two sons of Eli (1 Samuel 4:3f).A few years later the elders of Israel decided to take the Ark out onto the battlefield to assist them against the Philistines, after being defeated at the battle of Eben-Ezer (1 Sam. 4:3-11). They were, however, heavily defeated with the loss of 30,000 men. The Ark was captured by the Philistines and Hophni and Phinehas were killed. The news of its capture was at once taken to Shiloh by a messenger "with his clothes rent, and with earth upon his head." The old priest, Eli, fell dead when he heard it; and his daughter-in-law, bearing a son at the time the news of the capture of the Ark was received, named him Ichabod — explained as "The glory has departed Israel" in reference to the loss of the Ark (1 Sam. 4:12-22). The mother of the child Ichabod died at his birth. (1 Sam. 4:20) The Philistines took the Ark to several places in their country, and at each place misfortune befell them (1 Sam. 5:1-6). At Ashdod it was placed in the temple of Dagon. The next morning Dagon was found prostrate, bowed down, before it; and on being restored to his place, he was on the following morning again found prostrate and broken. The people of Ashdod were smitten with tumors; a plague of mice was sent over the land (1 Sam. 6:5). The affliction of boils was also visited upon the people of Gath and of Ekron, whither the Ark was successively removed (1 Sam. 5:8-12). After the Ark had been among them for seven months, the Philistines, on the advice of their diviners, returned it to the Israelites, accompanying its return with an offering consisting of golden images of the tumors and mice wherewith they had been afflicted. The Ark was set up in the field of Joshua the Beth-shemite, and the Beth-shemites offered sacrifices and burnt offerings (1 Sam. 6:1-15). Out of curiosity the men of Beth-shemesh gazed at the Ark; and as a punishment, seventy of them (fifty thousand and seventy in some translations) were smitten by the Lord (1 Samuel 6:19). The Bethshemites sent to Kirjath-jearim, or Baal-Judah, to have the Ark removed (1 Samuel 6:21); and it was taken to the house of Abinadab, whose son Eleazar was sanctified to keep it. Kirjath-jearim remained the abode of the Ark for twenty years. Under Saul, the Ark was with the army before he first met the Philistines, but the king was too impatient to consult it before engaging in battle. In 1 Chronicles 13:3 it is stated that the people were not accustomed to consulting the Ark in the days of Saul.At the beginning of his reign over the United Monarchy, King David removed the Ark from Kirjath-jearim amid great rejoicing. On the way to Zion, Uzzah, one of the drivers of the cart that carried the Ark, put out his hand to steady the Ark, and was struck dead by God for touching it. The place was subsequently named "Perez-Uzzah", literally "Outburst Against Uzzah",[10] as a result. David, in fear, carried the Ark aside into the house of Obed-edom the Gittite, instead of carrying it on to Zion, and there it stayed three months (2 Samuel 6:1-11; 1 Chronicles 13:1-13). On hearing that God had blessed Obed-edom because of the presence of the Ark in his house, David had the Ark brought to Zion by the Levites, while he himself, "girded with a linen ephod ... danced before the Lord with all his might" and in the sight of all the public gathered in Jerusalem - a performance that caused him to be scornfully rebuked by his first wife, Saul's daughter Michal (2 Sam. 6:12-16, 20-22; 1 Chron. 15). In Zion, David put the Ark in the tabernacle he had prepared for it, offered sacrifices, distributed food, and blessed the people and his own household (2 Sam. 6:17-20; 1 Chron. 16:1-3; 2 Chron. 1:4).

The Levites were appointed to minister before the Ark (1 Chron. 16:4). David's plan of building a temple for the Ark was stopped at the advice of God (2 Sam. 7:1-17; 1 Chron. 17:1-15; 28:2, 3). The Ark was with the army during the siege of Rabbah (2 Sam. 11:11); and when David fled from Jerusalem at the time of Absalom's conspiracy, the Ark was carried along with him until he ordered Zadok the priest to return it to Jerusalem (2 Sam. 15:24-29).

 

In Solomon's Temple

When Abiathar was dismissed from the priesthood by King Solomon for having taken part in Adonijah's conspiracy against David, his life was spared because he had formerly borne the Ark (1 Kings 2:26). Solomon worshipped before the Ark after his dream in which God promised him wisdom (1 Kings 3:15). During the construction of Solomon's Temple, a special inner room, named Kodesh Hakodashim (Eng. Holy of Holies), was prepared to receive and house the Ark (1 Kings 6:19); and when the Temple was dedicated, the Ark—containing the original tablets of the Ten Commandments—was placed therein (1 Kings 8:6-9). When the priests emerged from the holy place after placing the Ark there, the Temple was filled with a cloud, "for the glory of the Lord had filled the house of the Lord" (1 Kings 8:10-11; 2 Chron. 5:13, 14).

When Solomon married Pharaoh's daughter, he caused her to dwell in a house outside Zion, as Zion was consecrated because of its containing the Ark (2 Chron. 8:11). King Josiah also had the Ark returned to the Temple (2 Chron. 35:3), from which it appears to have been removed by one of his predecessors (cf. 2 Chron. 33-34 and 2 Kings 21-23).

 

The Babylonian Conquest and aftermath[edit]

In 587 BC, the Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and Solomon's Temple. There is no record of what became of the Ark in the Books of Kings and Chronicles. An ancient Greek version of the biblical third Book of Ezra, 1 Esdras, suggests that Babylonians took away the vessels of the ark of God, but does not mention taking away the Ark: And they took all the holy vessels of the Lord, both great and small, with the vessels of the ark of God, and the king's treasures, and carried them away into Babylon— 1 Esdras 1:54

In Rabbinic literature, the final disposition of the Ark is disputed. Some rabbis hold that it must have been carried off to Babylon, while others hold that it must have been hidden lest it be carried off into Babylon and never brought back.[11] A late 2nd-century rabbinic work known as the Tosefta states the opinions of these rabbis that Josiah, the king of Judah, stored away the Ark, along with the jar of manna, and a jar containing the holy anointing oil, the rod of Aaron which budded and a chest given to Israel by the Philistines.[12] This was said to have been done in order to prevent their being carried off into Babylon as had already happened to the other vessels. Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Shimon, in the same rabbinic work, state that the Ark was, in fact, taken into Babylon. Rabbi Yehudah, dissenting, says that the Ark was stored away in its own place, meaning, somewhere on the Temple Mount.

References in Scripture

Tanakh; The Ark is first mentioned in the Book of Exodus, and then numerous times in Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I Samuel, II Samuel, I Kings, I Chronicles, II Chronicles, Psalms and Jeremiah. In the Book of Jeremiah, it is referenced by Jeremiah, who, speaking in the days of Josiah (Jer. 3:16), prophesied a future time, possibly the end of days, when the Ark will no longer be talked about or be made again: And it shall be that when you multiply and become fruitful in the land, in those days - the word of the LORD - they will no longer say, 'The Ark of the Covenant of the LORD' and it will not come to mind; they will not mention it, and will not recall it, and it will not be used any more.Rashi comments on this verse that "The entire people will be so imbued with the spirit of sanctity that God's Presence will rest upon them collectively, as if the congregation itself was the Ark of the Covenant."

Second Book of Maccabees

According to Second Maccabees, at the beginning of chapter 2: The records show that it was the prophet Jeremiah who ... prompted by a divine message ... gave orders that the Tent of Meeting and the ark should go with him. Then he went away to the mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's promised land. When he reached the mountain, Jeremiah found a cave-dwelling; he carried the tent, the ark, and the incense-altar into it, then blocked up the entrance. Some of his companions came to mark out the way, but were unable to find it. When Jeremiah learnt of this he reprimanded them. "The place shall remain unknown", he said, "until God finally gathers his people together and shows mercy to them. The Lord will bring these things to light again, and the glory of the Lord will appear with the cloud, as it was seen both in the time of Moses and when Solomon prayed that the shrine might be worthily consecrated."II Maccabees 2:4–8 (Douay-Rheims, 1899) The "mountain from the top of which Moses saw God's promised land" would be Mount Nebo, located in what is now Jordan.

 

The Ark in Islamic sources

Chapter 2 (Sura 2) of the Quran (Verse 248), is believed to refer to the Ark: And their prophet said to them, "Indeed, a sign of his kingship is that the chest (tābūt) will come to you in which is assurance (sakīnatun) from your Lord and a remnant of what the family of Moses (Mūsā) and the family of Aaron (Hārūn) had left, carried by the angels. Indeed in that is a sign for you, if you are believers." The Arabic word sakīna (variously translated "peace of reassurance" or "spirit of tranquility") is related to the post-Biblical Hebrew shekhinah, meaning "dwelling or presence of God". The Islamic scholar Al Baidawi mentioned that the sakina could be Tawrat, the Books of Moses.[15] According to Al-Jalalan, the relics in the Ark were the fragments of the two tablets, rods, robes, shoes, mitres of Moses and the vase of manna.[15] Al-Tha'alibi, in Qisas Al-Anbiya (The Stories of the Prophets), has given an earlier and later history of the Ark.

According to Uri Rubin the Ark of the Covenant has a religious basis in Islam, and Islam gives it special significance.[

Possible locations: Since its disappearance from the Biblical narrative, there have been a number of claims of having discovered or of having possession of the Ark, and several possible places have been suggested for its location. Mount Nebo..2 Maccabees 2:4-10, written around 100 BC, says that the prophet Jeremiah, "being warned by God" before the Babylonian invasion, took the Ark, the Tabernacle, and the Altar of Incense, and buried them in a cave on Mount Nebo, informing those of his followers who wished to find the place that it should remain unknown "until the time that God should gather His people again together, and receive them unto mercy."[17] Mount Nebo is also described in the Bible (Deuteronomy 34) as the site from which Moses views the Promised Land, and apparently also is his final burial place. Mount Nebo is approximately 47 km (29 miles) slightly south of due east from Jerusalem, near the east bank of the Jordan River. Ethiopia..The Chapel of the Tablet at the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion in Axum allegedly houses the original Ark of the Covenant. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church claims to possess the Ark of the Covenant, or Tabot, in Axum. The object is currently kept under guard in a treasury near the Church of Our Lady Mary of Zion. Replicas of the Axum tabot are kept in every Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo church, each with its own dedication to a particular saint; the most popular of these include Mary, George and Michael. The Kebra Nagast was composed to legitimise the Solomonic dynasty, which ruled the Ethiopian Empire following its establishment in 1270. It narrates how the real Ark of the Covenant was brought to Ethiopia by Menelik I with divine assistance, while a forgery was left in the Temple in Jerusalem. Although the Kebra Nagast is the best-known account of this belief, it predates the document. Abu al-Makarim, writing in the last quarter of the twelfth century, makes one early reference to this belief that they possessed the Ark. "The Abyssinians possess also the Ark of the Covenant", he wrote, and, after a description of the object, describes how the liturgy is celebrated upon the Ark four times a year, "on the feast of the great nativity, on the feast of the glorious Baptism, on the feast of the holy Resurrection, and on the feast of the illuminating Cross." In his 1992 book The Sign and the Seal, British writer Graham Hancock suggests, contrary to the Kebra Nagast, that the ark spent several years in Egypt before it came to Ethiopia via the Nile River, where it was kept in the islands of Lake Tana for about four hundred years and finally taken to Axum.[20] Archaeologist John Holladay of the University of Toronto called Hancock's theory "garbage and hogwash," while Edward Ullendorff, a former Professor of Ethiopian Studies at the University of London, said he "wasted a lot of time reading it." On 25 June 2009, the patriarch of the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia, Abune Paulos, said he would announce to the world the next day the unveiling of the Ark of the Covenant, which he said had been kept safe and secure in a church in Axum, Ethiopia.[22] The following day, on 26 June 2009, the patriarch announced that he would not unveil the Ark after all, but that instead he could attest to its current status. The Lemba people of South Africa and Zimbabwe have claimed that their ancestors carried the Ark south, calling it the ngoma lungundu or "voice of God", eventually hiding it in a deep cave in the Dumghe mountains, their spiritual home.[On 14 April 2008, in a UK Channel 4 documentary, Tudor Parfitt, taking a literalist approach to the Biblical story, described his research into this claim. He says that the object described by the Lemba has attributes similar to the Ark. It was of similar size, was carried on poles by priests, was not allowed to touch the ground, was revered as a voice of their God, and was used as a weapon of great power, sweeping enemies aside. In his book The Lost Ark of the Covenant (2008), Parfitt also suggests that the Ark was taken to Arabia following the events depicted in the Second Book of Maccabees, and cites Arabic sources which maintain it was brought in distant times to Yemen. One Lemba clan, the Buba, which was supposed to have brought the Ark to Africa, have a genetic signature called the Cohen Modal Haplotype. This suggests a male Semitic link to the Levant. Lemba tradition maintains that the Ark spent some time in Sena in Yemen. Later, it was taken across the sea to East Africa and may have been taken inland at the time of the Great Zimbabwe civilization. According to their oral traditions, some time after the arrival of the Lemba with the Ark, it self-destructed. Using a core from the original, the Lemba priests constructed a new one. This replica was discovered in a cave by a Swedish German missionary named Harald von Sicard in the 1940s and eventually found its way to the Museum of Human Science in Harare.[25] Parfitt had this artifact radio-carbon dated to about 1350, which coincided with the sudden end of the Great Zimbabwe civilization.Chartres Cathedral, France

French author Louis Charpentier claimed that the Ark was taken to the Chartres Cathedral by the Knights Templar.. Rennes-le-Château, then to the United States

One author has theorised that the Ark was taken from Jerusalem to the village of Rennes-le-Château in Southern France. Karen Ralls has cited Freemason Patrick Byrne, who believes the Ark was moved from Rennes-le-Château at the outbreak of World War I to the United States.

The Ark of the Covenant was said to have been kept in the Basilica of St. John Lateran, surviving the pillages of Rome by Genseric and Alaric I but lost when the basilica burned. "Rabbi Eliezer ben José stated that he saw in Rome the mercy-seat of the temple. There was a bloodstain on it. On inquiry he was told that it was a stain from the blood which the high priest sprinkled thereon on the Day of Atonement."[In 2003, author Graham Phillips hypothetically concluded that the Ark was taken to Mount Sinai in the Valley of Edom by the Maccabees. Phillips claims it remained there until the 1180s, when Ralph de Sudeley, the leader of the Templars found the Maccabean treasure at Jebel al-Madhbah, and returned home to his estate at Herdewyke in Warwickshire, England taking the treasure with him.[34]

During the turn of the 20th century British Israelites carried out some excavations of the Hill of Tara in Ireland looking for the Ark of the Covenant—the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland campaigned successfully to have them stopped before they destroyed the hill. In 1922 in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, the royal tomb of the Pharaoh Tutankhamun (KV62) was opened by Howard Carter and Lord Carnarvon. Among the artifacts was a processional ark, listed as Shrine 261, the Anubis Shrine. Almost immediately after publication of the photographs[36] of this sensational archaeological find, some claimed that the Anubis Shrine could be the Ark of the Covenant. John M. Lundquist, author of The Temple of Jerusalem: Past, Present, and Future (2008), discounts this idea. The Anubis Shrine measures 95 centimetres (37 in) long, 37 centimetres (15 in) wide, and 54.3 centimetres (21.4 in) high in the shape of a pylon. The Biblical Ark of the Covenant is approximately 133 centimetres (52 in) long, 80 centimetres (31 in) wide, and 80 centimetres (31 in) high in the shape of a rectangular chest.

Lundquist observes that the Anubis Shrine is not strictly analogous to the Ark of the Covenant; it can only be said that the it is "ark-like", constructed of wood, gessoed and gilded, stored within a sacred tomb, "guarding" the treasury of the tomb (and not the primary focus of that environment), that it contains compartments within it that store and hold sacred objects, that it has a figure of Anubis on its lid, and that it was carried by two staves permanently inserted into rings at its base and borne by eight priests in the funerary procession to Tutankhamun's tomb. Its value is the insight it provides to the ancient culture of Egypt.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ark_of_the_Covenant

Fred Kalley built the 450 seat Park Theatre during the beginning of the Second World War and opened on the 17th July 1940. It was located in East White Rock, across the Campbell River Road from Semiahmoo Park, near the intersection of Keil Street and Campbell River Road. The manager was Guy Graham - he sold the the theatre to Mrs. Ethel Stone in 1947. In 1951 the Park Theatre was sold to Jim Petrovich. Although slowly sinking into the unstable flood pain, the Park Theatre struggled on until 1969 when the doors closed forever.

 

Park Theatre, White Rock, B.C. / June 1947

June / Weekdays: Doors open 6:30 PM / Show starts - 7:00 PM

Saturdays : Doors open 6:15 PM / Show starts - 6:30 PM

 

List of White Rock advertisers on this Park Theatre program:

- Seabrook Taxi / Phone White Rock 601

- Park Cafe / next to Theatre / Steaks, Chops / Homemade Pies / Fountain Service

- For your Holiday stay in White Rock / Why not "The White Rock Hotel / Yours For Service

- Bluebird / Coffee Bar / Soft Drinks Lunches / Ice Cream / Tobaccos / We also to Satisfy

- Red & White Store / Maple Street / Groceries and Meats / White & Payne / We Deliver

- Ocean View Service Station / Specialized Lubrication / Coil Testing / Quick Charge Battery Service / Phone 571

- Murray's Market / cor. Stayte and Pacific / Highest Quality / Meats and Groceries / Free Delivery

- Visit the Pace Park / Have Tea at the / Peace Arch Coffee Shop / picnics catered to / Phone W. R. 504

- Rent a Bike / Bicycles Tandems / Motor Scooters / Sporting Goods / W. Hanslow

- Hodgson's Variety Store / See our Smallwares / Tobbaco / Fountain Service / Magazines and Novelties

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Mon. Tue. Wed. June 2-3-4, 1947

"Anna and the King of Siam" (release date - June 20, 1946 U.S. release) starring - Irene Dunne, Rex Harrison and Linda Darnellis a 1946 drama film directed by John Cromwell. An adaptation of the 1944 novel of the same name by Margaret Landon, it was based on the fictionalized diaries of Anna Leonowens, an Anglo-Indian woman who claimed to be British and became governess in the Royal Court of Siam (now modern Thailand) during the 1860s. Darryl F. Zanuck read Landon's book in galleys and immediately bought the film rights. Link to video - Anna and the King of Siam Trailer - www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBEj5_h6y7A

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Thur. Fri. Sat. June 5-6-7, 1947

Caesar and Cleopatra - Starring Claude Rains, Vivien Leigh - is a 1945 British Technicolor film directed by Gabriel Pascal and starring Claude Rains and Vivien Leigh. Some scenes were directed by Brian Desmond Hurst who took no formal credit. It was adapted from the play Caesar and Cleopatra (1901) by George Bernard Shaw. The film was produced by Independent Producers and Pascal Film Productions, and was distributed by Eagle-Lion Distributors. Release date - 6 September 1946 in the US. Caesar and Cleopatra was a box-office failure, but it was nominated for an Oscar for Best Art Direction for John Bryan. Link to the complete movie - www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcOAS0ylQv4

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Mon. Tues. Wed. June 9-10-11, 1947

A.J. Cronin's "The Green Years" (Release date - July 4, 1946) George Coburn & Beverly Tyler - The Green Years is a 1946 American drama film featuring Charles Coburn, Tom Drake, Beverly Tyler and Hume Cronyn. It was adapted by Robert Ardrey from A. J. Cronin's novel of the same name. It tells the story of the coming-of-age of an Irish orphan in Scotland and was directed by Victor Saville. - The film was very popular at the box office. According to MGM records it made $4,222,000 in the US and Canada and $2,432,000 elsewhere, leading to a profit of $1,941,000. It was one of the most popular films of the year. Link to video - www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbzT8JuevaA&list=PLDC55D41DD7...

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Thursday Only June 13, 1947

"A Chip Off The Old Block" - (1944) Comedy. A naval-academy student (Donald O'Connor) woos a girl (Ann Blyth) whose mother and grandmother were wooed by his father and grandfather. With Donald O'Connor, Peggy Ryan, Ann Blyth, and Helen Vinson.

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Fri. Sat. June 13-14, 1947

"The Dark Mirror" is a 1946 American film noir psychological thriller film directed by Robert Siodmak starring Olivia de Havilland as twins and Lew Ayres as their psychiatrist. The film marks Ayres' return to motion pictures following his conscientious objection to service in World War II. De Havilland had begun to experiment with method acting at the time and insisted that everyone in the cast meet with a psychiatrist. The film anticipates producer/screenwriter Nunnally Johnson's psycho-docu-drama The Three Faces of Eve (1957). Vladimir Pozner's original story on which the film is based was nominated for an Academy Award. Release date - October 18, 1946 (New York City). Link to the movie - www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-TDYFrrRI

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Mon. Tue. Wed. - June 16-17-18, 1947

"Monsieur Beaucaire" A bumbling barber in the court of King Louis XV becomes engaged in political intrigue when he masquerades as a dashing nobleman engaged to the princess of Spain.

Director: George Marshall

Writers: Melvin Frank (screenplay), Norman Panama (screenplay)

Stars: Bob Hope, Joan Caulfield, Patric Knowles - Link to the movie - Monsieur Beaucaire - Bob Hope Joan Caulfield - www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2xd4jgB_M8

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Thursday Only - June 19, 1947

"Forever Yours" is a 1945 American drama film directed by William Nigh and starring Gale Storm, C. Aubrey Smith and Johnny Mack Brown. It was made by Monogram Pictures. Although the studio concentrated on low-budget films, this was one of the company's more prestigious releases of the year. A young singer is stricken by paralysis and loses the will to live. Link to - Gale Storm dramatic scene Forever Yours - www.youtube.com/watch?v=PaRU66VE7sE

also

"Cisco Kid Returns" is a 1945 American western drama film. Released on April 3, 1945, it was the first of three Cisco Kid films made that year with Duncan Renaldo as Cisco and Martin Garralaga as Pancho. In this release, Cisco's real name is Juan Francisco Hernandez. Cisco must clear himself of murder charges, while preventing his girlfriend Rosita (Callejo) from eloping with his rival John Harris (Pryor). Link to The Cisco Kid - www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nieAniXLw

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Mon. Tue. Wed. - June 23-24-25, 1947

"Margie" - is a 1946 American romantic comedy film directed by Henry King and starring Jeanne Crain, about a high school girl in the 1920s who develops a crush on her French teacher. Margie was a box-office hit, ranking in the top 15 highest-grossing films of the year, and established Crain as an important Fox star. Although not a true movie musical (as it uses period recordings, with only one song being partially performed by a character in the film), it is sometimes classified with musicals due to the large number of 1920s-era popular songs incorporated as nostalgic background in the film. The film was the basis for the 1961 television sitcom Margie, featuring Cynthia Pepper. Link to the complete movie - www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP5uej-LsE0

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Thursday Only - June 26, 1947

"Crack-Up" is a 1946 film noir directed by Irving Reis, remembered for directing many "Falcon" movies of the early 1940s including The Falcon Takes Over. The drama is based on "Madman's Holiday", a short-story written by mystery writer Fredric Brown. The drama features Pat O'Brien, Claire Trevor, Herbert Marshall, and others. (Release date - September 6, 1946). Link to - Crack Up 1946 Trailer - www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEyjEx_OM64

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Fri. Sat. - June 27-28, 1947

"Song of Scheherazade" is a 1947 American musical film directed by Walter Reisch. It tells the story of an imaginary episode in the life of the Russian composer Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (Jean-Pierre Aumont), in 1865, when he was a young naval officer on shore leave in Morocco. It also features Yvonne De Carlo as a Spanish dancer named Cara de Talavera, Eve Arden as her mother, and Brian Donlevy as the ship's captain. Charles Kullman (credited as Charles Kullmann), a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera, plays the ship's doctor, Klin, who sings two of Rimsky-Korsakov's melodies. (Release date March 1947). Link to a video of the complete movie - www.youtube.com/watch?v=2uxmeHLQcAY

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Mon. Tue. Only - June 30 - July 1, 1947

"No Leave, No Love" is a 1946 American musical film directed by Charles Martin and starring Van Johnson, Keenan Wynn and Pat Kirkwood. The story concerns Mike, a Marine and recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor, who returns with his pal Slinky from fighting in the Pacific during World War II. Mike expects to marry his hometown sweetheart; his mother wants to tell him in person that she has married someone else. Most of the film involves the efforts of Susan, a popular radio personality, to keep him from finding out or going home until his mother makes it to New York from Indiana. Susan and Mike fall in love; misunderstandings ensue. The shenanigans of the implausibly unpleasant and larcenous Slinky fill out the action, and the musical element is provided by several appearances of then-famous performers in nightclubs and on Susan’s radio show. The story is bookended by Mike’s arrival in the waiting room of a maternity ward and the birth of his and Susan’s son. Slinky gets the last word when Rosalind announces that she is pregnant. (Release date - October 3, 1946) Link to video - No Leave, No Love Trailer (1946) - www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3rRKUeyLHQ

The Psychological Study of Smiling

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By Eric Jaffe

A smile begins in our sensory corridors. The earcollects a whispered word. The eyes spot an old friend on the station platform. The hand feels the pressure of another hand. This emotional data funnels to the brain, exciting the left anterior temporal region in particular, then smolders to the surface of the face, where two muscles, standing at attention, are roused into action: The zygomatic major, which resides in the cheek, tugs the lips upward, and the orbicularis oculi, which encircles the eye socket, squeezes the outside corners into the shape of a crow’s foot. The entire event is short — typically lasting from two-thirds of a second to four seconds — and those who witness it often respond by mirroring the action, and smiling back.

Other muscles can simulate a smile, but only the peculiar tango of the zygomatic major and the orbicularis oculi produces a genuine expression of positive emotion. Psychologists call this the “Duchenne smile,” and most consider it the sole indicator of true enjoyment. The name is a nod to French anatomist Guillaume Duchenne, who studied emotional expression by stimulating various facial muscles with electrical currents. (The technique hurt so much, it’s been said, that Duchenne performed some of his tests on the severed heads of executed criminals.) In his 1862 book Mecanisme de la Physionomie Humaine, Duchenne wrote that the zygomatic major can be willed into action, but that only the “sweet emotions of the soul” force the orbicularis oculi to contract. “Its inertia, in smiling,” Duchenne wrote, “unmasks a false friend.”

Psychological scientists no longer study beheaded rogues — just graduate students, mainly — but they have advanced our understanding of smiles since Duchenne’s discoveries. We now know that genuine smiles may indeed reflect a “sweet soul.” The intensity of a true grin can predict marital happiness, personal well-being, and even longevity. We know that some smiles — Duchenne’s false friends — do not reflect enjoyment at all, but rather a wide range of emotions, including embarrassment, deceit, and grief. We know that variables (age, gender, culture, and social setting, among them) influence the frequency and character of a grin, and what purpose smiles play in the broader scheme of existence. In short, scientists have learned that one of humanity’s simplest expressions is beautifully complex.

A True ‘Sign of Enjoyment’

Duchenne’s observations took some time to catch on with behavioral scientists. In 1924, Carney Landis, then a psychology student at the University of Minnesota, published a classic — and by today’s standards, ethically dubious — study of human facial expressions. Landis took pictures of study participants engaged in a series of activities that ranged from sacred to profane: listening to jazz music, reading the Bible, looking at pornography, and decapitating live rats. He evaluated the photographed reactions but found no evidence that certain expressions characterized certain emotions. As for smiles, Landis failed to connect them with satisfaction; in fact, smiling occurred so ubiquitously that Landis considered it an evergreen response — ”typical of any situation,” he wrote in the Journal of Comparative Psychology.

For decades, many psychologists agreed that smiles reflected a vast array of emotions rather than a universal expression of happiness. This belief persisted until the 1970s, when Paul Ekman and Wallace Friesen, psychologists at the University of California at San Francisco, captured the precise muscular coordinates behind 3,000 facial expressions in their Facial Action Coding System, known as FACS. Ekman and Friesen used their system to resurrect Duchenne’s distinction, by that time forgotten, between genuine smiles of enjoyment and other types of smiles.

In subsequent research, conducted with Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin, Ekman and Friesen confirmed the unique link between positive emotion and the true Duchenne smile. The researchers attached electrodes to the heads of test participants and then showed them a series of short films. Two shorts, designed to produce positive emotions, displayed frolicking animals; two others, meant to evoke negative responses, came from a nurse training video depicting amputated legs and severe burns.

Using FACS, the researchers catalogued viewer reactions and found that Duchenne smiles correlated with the pleasant films. The neural data revealed that Duchenne smiles produced greater activity in the brain’s left anterior temporal region, an area with clear connections to positive affect. (They also recorded an increase in the left parietal region, typically stimulated by verbal activity.) All told, scientists were wrong to lump smiles together as a “single class of behavior,” the trio concluded in a 1990 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. “Clearly the Duchenne smile…is a better sign of enjoyment than other kinds of smiles.”

A renewed appreciation for Duchenne and his unique sign of joy emerged. Mental health researchers soon noticed that wherever positive emotions went, Duchenne smiles followed. Patients with depression brandished more Duchenne smiles on their discharge interviews than during their admissions, and Duchenne smiling alone — not other types of grins — was found to increase over the course of psychotherapy. Even casual, untrained observers could identify Duchenne-style faces, and based on these looks alone, assigned highly positive traits to the personality behind them.

Some researchers now believe that genuine smiles are not transient sparks of emotion but rather clear windows into a person’s core disposition. University of California at Berkeley psychological scientists LeeAnne Harker and Dacher Keltner used FACS to analyze the college yearbook photos of women, then matched up the smile ratings with personality data collected during a 30-year longitudinal study. Women who displayed true, Duchenne-worthy expressions of positive emotion in their 21-year-old photo had greater levels of general well-being and marital satisfaction at age 52. “People photograph each other with casual ease and remarkable frequency, usually unaware that each snapshot may capture as much about the future as it does the passing emotions of the moment,” Harker and Keltner wrote in a 2001 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. A related study, published in a 2009 issue of Motivation and Emotion, confirmed a correlation between low-intensity smiles in youth and divorce later in life.

In a more recent study, published this year in Psychological Science, Ernest Abel and Michael Kruger of Wayne State University extended this line of research from emotional outcomes to a biological one: longevity. Abel and Kruger rated the smiles of professional baseball players captured in a 1952 yearbook, then determined each player’s age at death (46 players were still alive at the time of the study). The researchers found that smile intensity could explain 35 percent of the variability in survival; in fact, in any given year, players with Duchenne smiles in their yearbook photo were only half as likely to die as those who had not.

A ‘Vehicle for All Ambiguities’

Landis was correct about smiles in one regard: not all of them are genuine expressions of happiness. In addition to the Duchenne smile, Ekman described seventeen other types of smiles in his 1985 book, Telling Lies. Herman Melville understood this, once calling a smile “the chosen vehicle for all ambiguities.” People smile when they’re frightened, are flirting, horrified, or mortified. An embarrassed smile reveals itself through an averted gaze, a facial touch, and a tilt of the head down and to the left.

People also smile when they’re lying, a fact not lost on Shakespeare: Hamlet marvels at how “one may smile, and smile, and be a villain.” In the late 1960s, Ekman and Friesen theorized that a trained expert could discern a lying face from an honest one. To put this idea to the test, the researchers asked a group of young nurses to watch a disturbing video then tell an interviewer that they had actually seen a pleasant one. Their facial expressions during this lie were videotaped and FACS analyzed.

Compared to smiles taped during honest interviews, the nurses gave fewer genuine, Duchenne smiles when lying, Ekman and Freisen reported in a 1988 paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, coauthored with Maureen O’Sullivan of the University of San Francisco. The deceitful grins were betrayed by either a raised upper lip, revealing a hint of disgust, or lowered lip corners, displaying a trace of sadness. Ekman’s work with lies later inspired the television show “Lie to Me,” in which investigators solve criminal cases by interpreting facial expressions.

It’s not unusual for moments of sadness, or even bereavement, to cause a smile. The world’s best-known smile is intriguing precisely because it could indicate a range of moods; Bob Dylan described Mona Lisa as having the “highway blues.” (Harvard neurobiologist Margaret Livingstone argued, in an article in Science from 2000, that La Gioconda’s smile exists in your peripheral visual field, but vanishes when you look directly at her mouth, see sidebar.)

However, it seems that smiling through tough times does a body good. Keltner and George Bonanno of Catholic University have measured the facial expressions of people who discuss a recently deceased spouse. In a 1997 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the researchers reported lower levels of distress in those who displayed genuine, Duchenne laughter during the discussion, compared to those who did not.

The benefits of smiling through grief appear to occur on a biological level as well. Barbara Fredrickson and Robert Levenson once observed the facial expressions made by 72 people watching a funeral scene from the tear-jerker Steel Magnolias. Not only did fifty of the participants smile at least once during the clip, the authors reported in a 1998 paper in Cognition and Emotion, but those who did recovered their baseline cardiovascular levels more quickly than others who failed to crack a grin.

A ‘Contingent Social Display’

Smiling certainly seems built into our nature. No less an authority than Darwin, whose 1872 book The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals is considered a foundational text of smiling research, proposed that facial expressions are universal products of human evolution rather than unique lessons of one’s culture. The zygomatic major has a long evolutionary history, says expression researcher Jeffrey Cohn of the University of Pittsburgh, and facial muscles used for smiling are found in all humans. “There’s good evidence that the motor routine involved in smiling is inborn,” says Cohn. “The hardware is there.”

No surprise, then, that newborns can dispense and interpret facial expressions with great precision. At just 10 months, for instance, an infant will offer a false smile to an approaching stranger while reserving a genuine, Duchenne smile for its mother. Decades ago, Cohn observed how 3-month-olds reacted to changes in their mother’s expression. When mothers feigned depression, infants threw up their tiny fists in distress, and after just 3 minutes of smile-free interaction they became withdrawn.

As infants mature, their tendency to smile diverges along gender lines. The ability to produce Duchenne smiles is parceled out equally between the sexes, but men say they smile less than women and both sexes think this to be the case. So do behavioral scientists, who are nearly unanimous in their belief that women smile more than men. Broadly speaking, that seems to be true. But the differences in smiling behavior between men and women hinge on several key factors. A few years ago, a research team led by Yale psychologist Marianne LaFrance performed a massive meta-analysis of smiling research analyzing data from 162 studies and more than 100,000 participants in all, and isolated three variables that influence sex-smiling disparities.

One moderator is gender norms: When people know they’re being watched, triggering this norm, sex differences in smiling are greater than when people believe they’re alone. A second is situational constraint: When men and women share a task or role that follows rigid social rules — like those requiring flight attendants to smile and funeral directors to remain somber — the grin gap diminishes. A third moderator is emotional climate: Embarrassing or socially tense situations cause females to smile more than males, but happy or sad situations have no such effect. Smiling, LaFrance and her collaborators concluded in a 2003 issue of Psychological Bulletin, “is a highly contingent social display.”

“If you ask people who smiles more, everyone will say, ‘Women, of course,’” says LaFrance, whose book on smiling research, Lip Service, is scheduled for publication by W.W. Norton next summer. “What people don’t consider as much — both within the field of psychology and outside of it, is how variable smiling is as a function of the context of a social situation.”

Part of this variability is the cultural background of the beholder. A study published in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology highlights the different ways that Americans and Japanese perceive smiles. When viewing emoticons, Americans located expression at the mouth, seeing as happy and as sad, while Japanese found it in the eyes, seeing ^_^ as joyful and ;_; as tearful. The variation may reflect an American tendency to express emotions and a Japanese tendency to suppress them; after all, as Duchenne knew, the mouth can be manipulated into a smile more easily than the eyes (see photographs on facing page). A supporting study, published earlier this year, found that Japanese participants emphasized the upper half of a face when determining its trustworthiness, whereas Americans focused on the lower half.

The presence of those around us can influence our smiles as well. An experiment led by Robert Kraut, published in a 1979 issue of Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, reported that bowlers smiled more often when facing their friends in the pit than when facing the pins on the lane. Of course people do smile to themselves, but many believe that social context pulls more strongly at our lips than pure, isolated emotion. Alan Fridlund of University of California, Santa Barbara, has found that people smile more when they imagine others around them than when they’re alone — even when their overall levels of happiness remain the same.

Signifying Altruism and Attraction

It stands to reason that if social settings influence our smiles, then smiles probably serve a social purpose. One such function, recent evidence suggests, may be to indicate altruism. To test this notion, a team of researchers led by British behavioral scientist Marc Mehu observed the smiles of test participants told to share some of the fee they received from the study with a friend. When people were engaged in this sharing activity they exhibited more Duchenne smiles than during a neutral scenario. Perhaps people issue genuine grins as a way to “reliably advertise altruistic intentions,” Mehu and his collaborators concluded in a 2007 issue of Evolution and Human Behavior.

That Duchenne smiles would announce a cooperative nature makes sense. After all, one’s level of commitment has obvious social value, and genuine smiles are difficult to feign. The ability to identify a truly group-minded person would be particularly useful to those prone to social exclusion. With this in mind, a group of researchers from Miami University of Ohio recently asked test participants to rate various smiles as genuine or fake. Before the task, some were primed for exclusion through an essay task that required them to write about a time they were rejected. Compared with a control group and others primed for inclusion, the excluded participants showed an enhanced ability to distinguish Duchenne smiles from false ones, the authors reported in Psychological Science in 2008.

Not only do people deduce useful information from smiles, they also use this knowledge to direct their own behavior. In a follow-up experiment, published in 2010 in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, the same researchers found that people primed for exclusion showed a greater preference to work with individuals displaying genuine Duchenne smiles than those bearing cheap grins. “Duchenne smiles are a signal of cooperation, altruisim,” says Michael Bernstein, now at Penn State Abington, lead author of both papers. “Non-Duchenne smiling isn’t necessarily bad — it doesn’t mean you’re nefarious — but it’s not a great signal. [Socially rejected people] should be looking for the best signal, and Duchenne smiles offer a better one.”

Another function of smiling (and one that anecdotal evidence supports) is that it enhances our attractiveness. One of the most famous characters in American letters, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Jay Gatsby, had an irresistible smile that “assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” For its part, science has identified part of the reason for a great smile’s allure. A recent fMRI study found that viewing attractive faces activated the brain’s orbitofrontal cortex, a region involved in processing sensory rewards. While this held true for all pretty mugs, the activity in this region was even stronger when the face in focus wore a smile. “The presence of a smile may provide an important signal that a reward is or is not attainable,” the researchers wrote in a Neuropsychologia (2003). Although some might argue that the brain, in seeing a smile, has already considered the reward attained.

 

This article inspired me to the point of exaggeration. Being a storyteller and imaginative artist, I’ve found your insight almost to the limits of my imagination. This is where I prefer to reside. Thank you for the insight and the inspiration in a new address to whom ever might enjoy the smile.

 

I’ll cut right to the chase and you can go back to whatever you were doing: smile, relax, sit up straight. You’re welcome.

 

In case you’re interested, here’s a little more context. Scientists have known for a long time that emotions are accompanied by numerous changes in the body, from elevation in the heart rate to flexion of the zygomatic major muscle (i.e. smiling). However, we’ve come to understand more recently that it’s a two way street. Your brain actually pays attention to what your body is doing, and it affects your emotions. This was first called the “facial feedback hypothesis”, but it applies to more than just muscles of the face. The good news is that while it’s sometimes hard to control our emotions, it’s much easier to control our muscles. So to teach you how to use your body to trick your brain, I’ll be releasing a series of quick tips for boosting your happiness, tranquility and confidence.

  

Smile. Seriously, just do it. You’ll enjoy this post more if you do. (If you’re thinking “Screw that, I don’t want to enjoy this post more” then feel free to stop reading). Your smile is a powerful tool. Most people think that we smile because we feel happy, but it can go the other way as well: we feel happy because we smile.

 

One of the best experiments to demonstrate this came from the late '80s. The researchers did not want to influence the results by telling subjects that the study was about emotion, so they devised an ingenious way to get the subjects to flex certain muscles of their face without knowing why. They had subjects hold a pencil in one of three ways. The first group held the pencil widthwise between their teeth, forcing a smile. The second group held the pencil in their lips lengthwise, which means they couldn’t smile, and were actually making kind of a frown. The control group held the pencil in their hand. Then the subjects looked at some cartoons, and rated how funny they were. The “smile” group gave the cartoons much higher “funny” ratings than the “frown” group, while the control group was somewhere in the middle.

 

In a more recent study, subjects were presented with a series of faces, which had either happy, neutral or angry expressions. The subjects were told that the study was attempting to measure reaction time of facial muscles, but they were really studying emotion. Regardless of the image, subjects were instructed to either “raise their cheeks” (aka smile) or “contract their eyebrows” (aka frown). The instructed facial expression influenced how the images were perceived. When subjects smiled they found the images more pleasant than when they frowned. On top of that, the effects of the brief smile even persisted 4 minutes later.

 

Facial feedback works because the brain senses the flexion of certain facial muscles (like the zygomatic major, which is required to smile) and interprets it as “Oh I must be happy about something.” Similarly, if that muscle isn’t flexed then your brain thinks, “Oh, I must not be happy”.

 

In addition to the direct neural feedback, in the real world you also get the added advantage of social feedback. Smiles are infectious (perhaps another post on mirror neurons in the future). So even if you don’t feel much happier, the people around you are more likely to smile, and that can improve your mood as well.

 

Lastly, if you can work up the energy to actually smile, you’ll probably have an even bigger benefit. While the zygomatic major controls the corners of your mouth, there is a muscle at the corner of the eyes called the orbicularis oculi that only flexes when you’re actually smiling. So if you really want to get the biggest facial feedback benefit, find something to laugh about (perhaps the fact that you’re trying to flex certain muscles to trick your brain into thinking you’re happy). That will likely generate a true smile. This is also a great tip for becoming more photogenic (trust me, I mean look at that profile pic). The reason many people think their smiles look fake in pictures is that their smiles are fake. The corners of their eyes are not flexed.

 

So next time you want to improve your mood a little, all you have to do is flex your zygomatic major muscles to raise the corners of your mouth. Although, if you want to win America’s Next Top Model (is that show still on?) you’ll have to flex those orbicularis oculi.

 

Check back soon for the next quick tip on increasing tranquility.

   

. Psychologic Effect II

 

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one of those damn assignments for school.... two self portraits, this will be the other half, the first half will not be posted in its origional form due to no makeup blaness

Is there something defective or psychologically unhygienic in the perverted love of ugliness? I must say that from the moment I first took up a camera I was always drawn to the sleazier type of subject-matter. It started with factory chimneys, overflowing dustbins, gasworks and spoil heaps, but to this day I still love dereliction and decay. Show me a crumbling back alley, a burned-out car or an abandoned building drowned in briars and ivy and I'll purr with satisfaction. Correspondingly I find the sterile tidiness of our modern surroundings about as thrilling as a buff envelope. Is it to do with the idea that all human ambition is futile, and is that futility something in which my black heart secretly rejoices? Does it please me that all things must eventually pass and are ultimately dust? ...including myself, of course. If so, I think there must be some kind of religious impulse at work, the Muggeridgian credo that Life is not our true habitat and that it is folly to invest our hopes in the things of this world. Howsoever, albeit that, insofar... (cont. p94).

This is definitely a couple, too, and I'm not trying to make any psychological comments or sly innuendos. Suffice it to say that a father-daughter bond is about as strong a "couple" relationship as you can find anywhere.

 

The girl appears to be about twelve-isn, slightly pre-teenager. And she might well be judgmental and critical of her dad in many instances ... but it looks like they've been having a good time playing catch out on the Great Lawn.

 

The man bears somewhat of a resemblance to the former governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. See this Wikipedia page for more detaisL

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer

 

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I am fascinated by the couples I see out on the street, and have decided that I should devote a Flickr album to show you some of the examples I’ve seen. It’s only been the past couple of days that I’ve decided to focus on couples specifically, so it will be a month before I feel that I can review and edit the new photos I’ve taken, without being too subjective about what I like and dislike. In the meantime, I’ll go through the photos I’ve already taken—which extends back over 45 years—to see which couple-related photos look worthy of bringing to your attention.

 

Why am do I find couples so interesting? The simple answer is: public displays of affection. I’m a sucker for situations where I see a couple embracing, hugging or kissing; and I can’t help smiling even when I see an ordinary couple walking down the street, holding hands. Sometimes it’s even more subtle: it may be only the body language that shows you something special is going on. Indeed, sometimes I have to be very careful: the mere fact that two people are walking side-by-side on a crowded street does not necessarily mean that they even know each other, let alone that they are a formal couple. But you can usually tell by watching for a few seconds: even if they are not holding hands, a “real" couple will tend to adopt a common stride, and they’ll move their legs and feet in tandem. Sooner or later, one of them will look at the other; or one of them will reach across and grab his/her partner’s hand.

 

Sometimes it’s not the affection that catches my interest, but the individuals themselves. If it’s two beautiful people, I can’t stop help staring in amazement and appreciation. And if it’s two ugly people, I often think to myself, “Thank goodness the two of you found each other!” Sometimes one of them is beautiful, and the other one is not; and then I find myself thinking, “What on earth is he doing with her?” Or, obviously, the converse: “What on earth is she doing with him?” Sometimes the situation does not cry out, “These two don’t belong together,” but merely, “Who on earth would have predicted that these two would have found each other? I wonder how that ever happened?”

 

Of course, the very term “couple” can be a little tricky these days — especially in a large, multicultural city like New York. Most of the couples that I see are old-fashioned traditional “straight” couples; but more and more of the couples are gay pairs, of one persuasion or another. I’m delighted that the gay couples look happy and unembarrassed; and I’m even happier that nobody (at least here in NYC) pays any attention to them.

 

Indeed, my definition of “couples” is broader and more general than just two adults who have some kind of relationship. I’m equally interested in couples that consist of parent and child, or brother and sister, or even two friends who get along well but who may not have any romantic association at all. And it doesn’t have to be a twosome: three or four close friends, or a parent with several children, or any other reasonable combination, is still something I’m likely to notice and photograph.

 

So I’ll start this album by adding any existing couples that I’ve already photographed in the past (and who have thus appeared in one or more other Flickr albums of mine), and will add some notes to indicate why I think they are an “interesting” couple. That should keep me busy for a while, and within a few weeks, I’ll start adding “new” couples that I’ve seen on the street, and that I’ve decided photograph primarily they are couples.

 

If you see any of my other Flickr photos that you think should be included here, please let me know.

 

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As I wrote in another Flickr set a few years ago, you can be reasonably sure that there will be lots of interesting people to photograph in Central Park if you happen to visit when on a weekend when the weather is nice. My typical plan, on such photo expeditions, is to walk through and around several different parts of the park -- in order to see different groups of people, and also to take advantage of different scenes and backdrops. But it means that I don't spend very much time in any one place, and most of my shots end up being "ad hoc" in nature, with almost no planning, preparation, framing, or composition.

 

On this particular weekend in mid-April, I decided to restrict my wandering to just one area -- the "Great Lawn" that's more-or-less in the center of the north-south expanse of the park. I walked around the sidewalk perimeter of the large grassy area, starting at the north end (because I had entered the park at 86th Street), heading down to the south end by the Delacorte Theater and the Belvedere Castle, and then back north again to my starting point. Actually, I went around the same loop two or three times before I got bored and went home ...

 

I had a 24-200mm zoom lens on my Sony RX-10 camera while I was walking, and while that made it relatively easy to capture some interesting scenes of people out in the middle of the lawn, as well as people just a couple feet away from me. Normally, I would just shrug and mutter to myself, "Well, that's the way it goes&quot. For most of the walk,I set the lens to its maximum wide-angle setting, and take advantage of quick, unfocused, wide-angle "hip shots" whenever there was something interesting nearby that I had to shoot quickly.

 

When I got home, I decided to take a quick look at the Wikipedia article about the Great Lawn, to see if there was anything special that I needed to mention in these notes. I didn't expect to find much, because -- as far as I knew -- it had always been part of Central Park, and had always been the same. To my surprise, I found that that was definitely not not the case. Indeed, today's Great Lawn is situated on a flat area that was occupied by the 35-acre "Lower Reservoir" that was constructed in 1842 to supply water to the residents of the city. After the Croton-Catskill reservoir system was completed, the Lower Reservoir became redundant -- but political battles ensued for several decades before the city finally settled on a plan for an oval lawn.

 

That plan basically fell apart because of the Depression, and the open area was filled with a "Hooverville" of improvised shacks for quite some time. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia finally brought in the legendary Robert Moses (the visionary force behind so many other parks around New York City and the rest of the state) to implement the plan -- and it was essentially finished in 1934.

 

And there's more to the history, too, but I'll let you read that on your own if you're interested. (You might be interested to know, for example, that in 1995, Pope John Paul II held an open-air mass for 125,000 on the Great Lawn. Yes, it is that big!)

 

In any case, I finished my third loop around the park, went home and uploaded several hundred photos, which I've winnowed down to the ones you'll find in this set...

I cross my fingers…

 

Psychological aspect: Greed

I am not interested in light; I want your delicious food.

 

HKD

 

Der Schlüssel zur Freiheit von der Angst

(z. B. nicht geliebt zu werden oder nicht genug zu bekommen…)

 

Ihre Tochter fühle sich nicht zu dünn, sagte die mir im Zug gegenübersitzende Frau. Bis zur nächsten Station informierte sie mich Schritt für Schritt über die Magersucht der sechszehnjährigen. Sie ginge regelmäßig mit ihrem Hund an die frische Luft, oft an den Ufern des Flusses und starre immer wieder völlig versunken auf das Wasser.

„Ich mache mir Sorgen“, sagte die Frau. „Ich habe sie gefragt, was sie grübelt, aber sie gibt mir nur ausweichende Antworten.“

Ich erfuhr, dass Pamela Vegetarierin sei, sehr tierlieb und sich Vorwürfe mache, weil sie dem Betteln ihres Hundes immer nachgebe.

„Er hat das an Gewicht zu viel“, sagte die Frau, „was Pamela zu wenig hat.“

Ich hörte eine Viertelstunde aufmerksam zu, denn die Frau hatte mich gefragt, ob sie mich um einen Rat bitten dürfe. Der Sachverhalt war mir nun bis in kleine Details aus der Sicht der Mutter klar geworden, doch der zentrale Punkt erschien mir ihre Angst.

Ihre Angst hatte ihre Scheu überwunden und sie motiviert, einen fremden Mann im Zug anzusprechen und ihn um Rat zu bitten.

Ich fragte sie, ob sie an Gott glaube. Sie senkte ihren Blick und überlegte ein paar Sekunden. Ihre Gegenfrage, ob ich Pfarrer sei, verneinte ich.

„Warum fragen Sie mich dann?“

Ich antwortete ihr, dass Angst häufig die Ursache des verlorenen Vertrauens in die eigene innere Stimme sei.

„Ich habe Angst um meine Tochter!“

„Ihre Tochter ist der Auslöser Ihrer Angst“, entgegnete ich. „Es könnte auch etwas anderes sein. Und nun, so vermute ich, wünschen Sie von mir einen Rat, wie Ihre Tochter von ihrem selbstschädigenden Verhalten befreit werden kann, damit Sie sich nicht mehr um sie ängstigen müssen.“

„Ja, natürlich“, antwortete die Frau.

„Ihre Tochter hat ebenfalls Angst“, sagte ich. "Vor der Zukunft, vor der Schule, vor dem, was die anderen über sie denken und so weiter.“´

„Ich verstehe“, sagte die Frau. „Sie reagiert aus Angst und ich ebenfalls. Aber was machen wir denn jetzt dagegen?“

„Wo liegt der Ursprung der Angst?“ fragte ich.

„Ich hatte Angst vor meinem Vater“, antwortete sie. „Aber meine Tochter hat keine Angst vor mir oder vor meinem Mann. Sie hat Angst vor ihren Mitschülerinnen, die sie verspotten. Da ist viel Druck von Außen, und sie fühlt sich auf sich allein gestellt. Gleichzeitig lehnt sie meine Bemühungen ihr zu helfen ab. Angeblich mische ich mich schon viel zu sehr in ihr Leben ein. Ich habe Angst, dass sie mich eines Tages ganz ablehnt.“

„Angst, nicht oder nicht mehr geliebt zu werden, kenne ich“, sagte ich. „Und so bemühte ich mich um wohlgefälliges Verhalten und schaffte es dennoch nicht, den Ansprüchen der anderen und an mich selbst, gerecht zu werden.“

„Ich möchte doch nur eine gute Mutter sein.“

„Und haben Angst, zu scheitern.“

„Ja“, sagte sie und seufzte. „Ich war meinem Vater nicht gut genug. Und jetzt bin ich eine schlechte Mutter, weil ich meiner Tochter nicht helfen kann.“

„Ich bin auch nicht gut genug“, sagte ich. „Doch ich bin den Weg der Selbstannahme gegangen. Ich habe akzeptiert, dass ich Fehler mache und nie gut genug sein kann.“

„Ich kann mir einige Fehler nicht verzeihen“, sagte die Frau. „Wie könnte ich das?“

„Es gibt eine höhere Kraft in jedem Menschen“, antwortete ich. „Psychologen nennen sie das höhere Selbst, das Über-Ich oder nehmen auch die traditionelle Bezeichnung, Gott. Diese Kraft existiert, wie ich selbst erfahren habe. Da meine Ängste sich mit zunehmender Erfahrung und wachsendem Wissen stark verringerten, kann ich sagen, dass vielleicht auch Ihnen die Bitte um Gnade hilft. Bitten Sie die in Ihnen wohnende göttliche Kraft um die Gnade, von den Ängsten erlöst zu werden.“

„Sie sind doch Pfarrer“, lachte die Frau.

Ich schüttelte den Kopf.

„Dann sind Sie aber Seelsorger.“

Ich nickte verhalten. „Man kann einige meiner Handlungen so interpretieren“, sagte ich. „Kümmern Sie sich um Ihre eigene Seele. Dort liegt der Schlüssel zur Freiheit von Angst.“

 

HKD

 

Digital art based on own photography and textures

 

HKD

 

Lt. Col. Bill Edmonds, author of God Is Not Here: A Soldier’s Struggle with Torture, Trauma, and the Moral Injuries of War, and former Special Forces officer with combat deployments in Iraq

 

Maj. (ret.) Ian Fishback, former Special Forces officer named by TIME magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world after sending Sen. John McCain a letter on prisoner abuse in Iraq and currently a PhD candidate in Philosophy at the University of Michigan

 

Dr. Kate McGraw, Deputy Division Chief, Psychological Health Center of Excellence, Defense Health Agency

Sgt. Amanda Albright, 2nd POG competitor, prepares her feet for the upcoming 10k ruck march following the completion of an obstacle course during USACPOC(A)'s Best Warrior Competition obstacle course at Fort Bragg, N.C. on May 11, 2011. The four day competition began 14 Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Soldiers who represent each of the command's major subordinate units. The top enlisted warrior will represented USACAPOC(A) at the Army Reserve Best Warrior Competition this summer. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt Amanda Smolinski)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4529/1, 1929-1930. Photo: MGM.

 

American film star Joan Crawford (1904-1977) had a career that would span many decades, studios, and controversies. In her silent films, she made an impact as a vivacious Jazz Age flapper and later she matured into a star of psychological melodramas.

 

Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur in 1904, in San Antonio, Texas. Her parents were Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry labourer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated. The young Lucille was bullied and shunned at Scaritt Elementary School in Kansas City by the other students due to her poor home life. She worked with her mother in a laundry and felt that her classmates could smell the chemicals and cleaners on her. She said that her love of taking showers and being obsessed with cleanliness had begun early in life as an attempt to wash off the smell of the laundry. Her stepfather Henry Cassin allegedly began sexually abusing her when she was eleven years old, and the abuse continued until she was sent to St. Agnes Academy, a Catholic girls' school. By the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. Lucille LeSueur worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in the choruses of travelling revues in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. She was spotted dancing in Detroit by famous New York producer Jacob J. Shubert. Shubert put her in the chorus line for his show 'Innocent Eyes'(1924) at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway. Then followed another Schubert production, 'The Passing Show of 1924'. After-hours, she danced for pay in the town it-spot, Club Richman, which was run by the 'Passing Show' stage manager Nils Granlund and popular local personality Harry Richman. In December 1924, Granlund called Lucille to tell her that Al Altman, a NYC-based talent scout from MGM had caught her in 'The Passing Show of 1924' and wanted her to do a screen test. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) offered Crawford a contract at $75 a week. On New Year's Day 1925 she boarded the train for Culver City. Credited as Lucille LeSueur, her first film part was as a showgirl in Lady of the Night (Monta Bell, 1925), starring MGM's most popular female star, Norma Shearer. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after she also appeared in The Circle (Frank Borzage, 1925) and Pretty Ladies (Monta Bell, 1925), starring comedian ZaSu Pitts. She also appeared in a small role Erich von Stroheim's classic The Merry Widow (1925) with Mae Murray and John Gilbert. MGM publicity head Pete Smith recognised her ability to become a major star but felt her name sounded fake. He told studio head , Louis B. Mayer, that her last name, LeSueur, reminded him of a sewer. Smith organised a contest called 'Name the Star' in Movie Weekly to allow readers to select her new stage name. The initial choice was 'Joan Arden', but after another actress was found to have prior claim to that name, the alternate surname 'Crawford' became the choice. She first made an impression on audiences in Edmund Goulding's showgirl tale Sally, Irene and Mary (1925). The film, which co-starred Constance Bennett and Sally O'Neil, was a hit. Joan's popularity grew so quickly afterwards that two films in which she was still billed as Lucille Le Sueur: Old Clothes (Edward F. Cline, 1925) with Jackie Coogan, and The Only Thing (Jack Conway, 1925) were recalled, and her name on the billings was changed to Joan Crawford. In 1926, Crawford was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, and she starred opposite Charles Ray in Paris (Edmund Goulding, 1926). Within a few years, she became the romantic female lead to many of MGM's top male stars, including Ramón Novarro, John Gilbert, and action star Tim McCoy. She appeared alongside her close friend, William Haines in the comedy Spring Fever (Edward Sedgwick, 1927). It was the second film starring Haines and Crawford (the first had been Sally, Irene and Mary (1925)), and their first onscreen romantic teaming. Then, Crawford appeared in the silent horror film The Unknown (Tod Browning, 1927), starring Lon Chaney, Sr., who played Alonzo the Armless, a circus freak who uses his feet to toss knives. Crawford played his skimpily-clad young carnival assistant whom he hopes to marry. She stated that she learned more about acting from watching Chaney work than from anyone else in her career. Her role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (Harry Beaumont, 1928) elevated her to star status. Joan co-starred with Anita Page and Dorothy Sebastian, and her spunky wild-but-moral flapper character struck a chord with the public and zeitgeist. Wikipedia: "The role established her as a symbol of modern 1920s-style femininity which rivaled Clara Bow, the original It girl, then Hollywood's foremost flapper. A stream of hits followed Our Dancing Daughters, including two more flapper-themed movies, in which Crawford embodied for her legion of fans (many of whom were women) an idealized vision of the free-spirited, all-American girl." The fan mail began pouring in and from that point on Joan was a bonafide star. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, the romantic drama Untamed (Jack Conway, 1929) with Robert Montgomery, was a success. Michael Eliott at IMDb: "It's rather amazing to see how well she transformed into a sound star and you have to think that she was among the best to do so."

 

In the early 1930s, tired of playing fun-loving flappers, Joan Crawford wanted to change her image. Thin lips would not do for her; she wanted big lips. Ignoring her natural lip contours, Max Factor ran a smear of colour across her upper and lower lips. It was just what she wanted. To Max, the Crawford look, which became her trademark, was always 'the smear'.

 

As the 1930s progressed, Joan Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She developed a glamorous screen image, appearing often as a sumptuously gowned, fur-draped, successful career woman. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (Edmund Goulding, 1932), Sadie McKee (Clarence Brown, 1934), No More Ladies (Edward H. Griffith, 1935), and Love on the Run (W.S. Van Dyke, 1936) with Clark Gable.

 

Crawford often played hard-working young women who found romance and success. Movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied. Her fame rivalled, and later outlasted, that of MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Among her early successes as a dramatic actress were The Women (George Cukor, 1939), Susan and God (1940), Strange Cargo (1940), and A Woman’s Face (1941).

 

By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving Joan Crawford plum roles. Newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros. In 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime in Mildred Pierce (Michael Curtiz, 1945). It is the story of an emotional and ambitious woman who rises from waitress to owner of a restaurant chain. The role gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter (Ann Blyth) everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (Jean Negulesco, 1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (Curtis Bernhardt, 1947) with Van Heflin. Again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (H.C. Potter, 1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952) opposite Jack Palance and Gloria Grahame. This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (Daniel Mann, 1952). In 1955, Crawford became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alfred Steele. Crawford married four times. Her first three marriages to the actors Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (1929–1933), Franchot Tone (1935–1939), and Phillip Terry (1942–1946) all had ended in divorce. After his death in 1959 she became a director of the company and in that role hired her friend Dorothy Arzner to film several Pepsi commercials. Crawford's film career slowed and she appeared in minor roles until 1962. Then she and Bette Davis co-starred in Whatever happened to Baby Jane? (Robert Aldrich, 1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the bad monster movie Trog (Freddie Francis, 1970). It is said Bette Davis commented that if she had found herself starring in Trog, she'd commit suicide. Anyway, Joan Crawford retired from the screen, and following a public appearance in 1974 withdrew from public life. Turning to vodka more and more, she became increasingly reclusive. In 1977, Joan Crawford died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 72 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote the controversial memoir 'Mommie Dearest' (1978). In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in the film adaptation Mommie Dearest (Frank Perry, 1981) which did well at the box office. Joan Crawford is interred in a mausoleum in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.

 

Sources: Stephanie Jones (The Best of Everything), Michael Elliott (IMDb), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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For the album by The Creatures, see Anima Animus.

The anima and animus are described in Carl Jung's school of analytical psychology as part of his theory of the collective unconscious. Jung described the animus as the unconscious masculine side of a woman, and the anima as the unconscious feminine side of a man, each transcending the personal psyche. Jung's theory states that the anima and animus are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to the theriomorphic and inferior function of the shadow archetypes. He believed they are the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the Self.

 

In Jung's theory, the anima makes up the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses and the animus the masculine ones possessed by a woman. He did not believe they were an aggregate of father or mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or teachers, though these aspects of the personal unconscious can influence a person's anima or animus.

 

Jung believed a male's sensitivity is often lesser or repressed, and therefore considered the anima one of the most significant autonomous complexes. Jung believed the anima and animus manifest themselves by appearing in dreams and influence a person's attitudes and interactions with the opposite sex. A natural understanding of another member of the opposite sex is instilled in individuals that stems from constant subjection to members of the opposite sex. This instilment leads to the development of the anima and animus.[1] Jung said that "the encounter with the shadow is the 'apprentice-piece' in the individual's development ... that with the anima is the 'masterpiece'".[2] Jung viewed the anima process as being one of the sources of creative ability. In his book The Invisible Partners, John A. Sanford said that the key to controlling one's anima/animus is to recognize it when it manifests and exercise our ability to discern the anima/animus from reality.[3]

  

Contents

1Origin

1.1Anima

1.2Animus

2Levels of anima development

2.1Eve - Object of desire, provider of nourishment, security and love

2.2Helen - Worldly achiever, intelligent and talented

2.3Mary - Righteous and a paragon of virtue

2.4Sophia - Wise and fully human, equal and not at all an object

3Levels of animus development

3.1Tarzan - Man of mere physical power

3.2Byron - Man of action or romance

3.3Lloyd George - Man as a professor, clergyman, orator

3.4Hermes - Man as a spiritual guide

4Anima and animus compared

5Jungian cautions

6References

7Further reading

8External links

Origin

Anima

Anima originated from Latin, and was originally used to describe ideas such as breath, soul, spirit or vital force. Jung began using the term in the early 1920s to describe the inner feminine side of men.[4]

 

Animus

Animus originated from Latin, where it was used to describe ideas such as the rational soul, life, mind, mental powers, courage or desire.[5] In the early nineteenth century, animus was used to mean "temper" and was typically used in a hostile sense. In 1923, it began being used as a term in Jungian psychology to describe the masculine side of women.[5]

 

Levels of anima development

Jung believed anima development has four distinct levels, which in "The psychology of the transference" he named Eve, Helen, Mary and Sophia. In broad terms, the entire process of anima development in a man is about the male subject opening up to emotionality, and in that way a broader spirituality, by creating a new conscious paradigm that includes intuitive processes, creativity and imagination, and psychic sensitivity towards himself and others where it might not have existed previously.[citation needed]

 

Eve - Object of desire, provider of nourishment, security and love

The first is Eve, named after the Genesis account of Adam and Eve. It deals with the emergence of a man's object of desire. The anima is completely tied up with woman as provider of nourishment, security and love.

 

The man at this anima level cannot function well without a woman, and is more likely to be controlled by her or, more likely, by his own imaginary construction of her. He is often impotent or has no sexual desire.[citation needed]

 

Helen - Worldly achiever, intelligent and talented

The second is Helen, an allusion to Helen of Troy in Greek mythology. In this phase, women are viewed as capable of worldly success and of being self-reliant, intelligent and insightful, even if not altogether virtuous. This second phase is meant to show a strong schism in external talents (cultivated business and conventional skills) with lacking internal qualities (inability for virtue, lacking faith or imagination).[citation needed]

 

Mary - Righteous and a paragon of virtue

The third phase is Mary, named after the Christian theological understanding of the Virgin Mary (Jesus' mother). At this level, women can now seem to possess virtue by the perceiving man (even if in an esoteric and dogmatic way), in as much as certain activities deemed consciously unvirtuous cannot be applied to her.[citation needed]

 

Sophia - Wise and fully human, equal and not at all an object

The fourth and final phase of anima development is Sophia, named after the Greek word for wisdom. Complete integration has now occurred, which allows women to be seen and related to as particular individuals who possess both positive and negative qualities. The most important aspect of this final level is that, as the personification "Wisdom" suggests, the anima is now developed enough that no single object can fully and permanently contain the images to which it is related.[citation needed]

 

Levels of animus development

Jung focused more on the man's anima and wrote less about the woman's animus. Jung believed that every woman has an analogous animus within her psyche, this being a set of unconscious masculine attributes and potentials. He viewed the animus as being more complex than the anima, postulating that women have a host of animus images whereas the male anima consists only of one dominant image.

 

Jung stated that there are four parallel levels of animus development in a woman.[6]

 

Tarzan - Man of mere physical power

The animus "first appears as a personification of mere physical power - for instance as an athletic champion or muscle man, such as 'the fictional jungle hero Tarzan'".[7]

 

Byron - Man of action or romance

In the next phase, the animus "possesses initiative and the capacity for planned action...the romantic man - the 19th century British poet Byron; or the man of action - America's Ernest Hemingway, war hero, hunter, etc."[8]

 

Lloyd George - Man as a professor, clergyman, orator

In the third phase "the animus becomes the word, often appearing as a professor or clergyman...the bearer of the word - Lloyd George, the great political orator".[8]

 

Hermes - Man as a spiritual guide

"Finally, in his fourth manifestation, the animus is the incarnation of meaning. On this highest level he becomes (like the anima) a mediator of...spiritual profundity".[9] Jung noted that "in mythology, this aspect of the animus appears as Hermes, messenger of the gods; in dreams he is a helpful guide." Like Sophia, this is the highest level of mediation between the unconscious and conscious mind.[citation needed] In the book The Invisible Partners, John A. Sanford said that the key to controlling one's anima/animus is to recognize it when it manifests and exercise our ability to discern the anima/animus from reality.[3]

 

Anima and animus compared

The four roles are not identical with genders reversed. Jung believed that while the anima tended to appear as a relatively singular female personality, the animus may consist of a conjunction of multiple male personalities: "in this way the unconscious symbolizes the fact that the animus represents a collective rather than a personal element".[10]

 

The process of animus development deals with cultivating an independent and non-socially subjugated idea of self by embodying a deeper word (as per a specific existential outlook) and manifesting this word. To clarify, this does not mean that a female subject becomes more set in her ways (as this word is steeped in emotionality, subjectivity, and a dynamism just as a well-developed anima is) but that she is more internally aware of what she believes and feels, and is more capable of expressing these beliefs and feelings. Thus the "animus in his most developed form sometimes...make[s] her even more receptive than a man to new creative ideas".[11]

 

Both final stages of animus and anima development have dynamic qualities (related to the motion and flux of this continual developmental process), open-ended qualities (there is no static perfected ideal or manifestation of the quality in question), and pluralistic qualities (which transcend the need for a singular image, as any subject or object can contain multiple archetypes or even seemingly antithetical roles). They also form bridges to the next archetypal figures to emerge, as "the unconscious again changes its dominant character and appears in a new symbolic form, representing the Self".[12]

 

Jung's theory of anima and animus draws from his theory of individuation. In order for a person to reach the goal of individuation is to engage in a series of intrapersonal dialogues which help the person understand how he or she relates to the world. This process requires men and women to become aware of their anima or animus respectively, in so doing the individual will learn how not to be controlled by their anima or animus. As individuals are made aware of their anima or animus, it allows them to overcome thoughts of who they ought to be and accept themselves for who they really are. According to Jung, individuals can discover a bridge to the collective unconscious through the development of their anima or animus. The anima and the animus represent the unconscious. The anima and animus are not gender specific and men and women can have both, however, more empirical research is required to determine whether both men and women do possess both archetypes. [13]

 

Jungian cautions

Jungians warned that "every personification of the unconscious - the shadow, the anima, the animus, and the Self - has both a light and a dark aspect....the anima and animus have dual aspects: They can bring life-giving development and creativeness to the personality, or they can cause petrification and physical death".[14]

 

One danger was of what Jung termed "invasion" of the conscious by the unconscious archetype - "Possession caused by the anima...bad taste: the anima surrounds herself with inferior people".[15] Jung insisted that "a state of anima possession...must be prevented. The anima is thereby forced into the inner world, where she functions as the medium between the ego and the unconscious, as does the persona between the ego and the environment".[16]

 

Alternatively, over-awareness of the anima or animus could provide a premature conclusion to the individuation process - "a kind of psychological short-circuit, to identify the animus at least provisionally with wholeness".[17] Instead of being "content with an intermediate position", the animus seeks to usurp "the self, with which the patient's animus identifies. This identification is a regular occurrence when the shadow, the dark side, has not been sufficiently realized".[17]

 

References

Ewen, Robert B. (2003). An Introduction to the Theories of Personality. Taylor & Francis. p. 66. ISBN 9780805843569.

Jung quoted in Anthony Stevens On Jung (London 1990) p. 206

Sandford, John A. The Invisible Partners: How the Male and Female in Each of Us Affects Our Relationships, 1980, Paulist Press, N.Y.

"The definition of anima". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2018-05-31.

"The definition of animus". www.dictionary.com. Retrieved 2018-05-31.

Jung, Carl. The Psychology of the Unconscious, Dvir Co., Ltd., Tel-Aviv, 1973 (originally 1917)

M.-L. von Franz, "The Process of Individuation" in Carl Jung ed., Man and his Symbols (London 1978) p. 205-6

von Franz, "Process" p. 205-6

von Franz, "Process" p. 206-7

von Franz, Process p. 206

von Franz, Process p. 207

von Franz, Process p. 207-8

K., Papadopoulos, Renos (2012). The Handbook of Jungian Psychology : Theory, Practice and Applications. Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-48078-3. OCLC 817888854.

von Franz, "Process" in Jung, Symbols p. 234

C. G. Jung, The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (London 1996) p. 124

C. G. Jung, Alchemical Studies (London 1978) p. 180

Jung, Alchemical p. 268

Further reading

The Invisible Partners: How the Male and Female in Each of Us Affects Our Relationships by John A. Sanford (Paperback – Jan 1, 1979).

External links

Archive for Research in Archetypal Symbolism website

Sample image with scholarly commentary: Hall of the Bulls at Lascaux

Jung on the anima and animus

vte

Carl Jung

Theories

Analytical psychologyCognitive functionsInterpretation of religionPersonality typeSynchronicityTheory of neurosis

Concepts

The psyche

Anima and animusCollective unconsciousComplexElectra complexInner childPersonal unconsciousPersonaSelfShadow

Jungian archetypes

ApolloTricksterWise Old Man and Wise Old WomanWounded healer

Other

Active imaginationEnantiodromiaExtraversion and introversionIndividuationParticipation mystique

Publications

Early

Psychology of the Unconscious (1912)Psychological Types (1921)Modern Man in Search of a Soul (1933)

Later

Psychology and Alchemy (1944)Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1951)Answer to Job (1954)Mysterium Coniunctionis (1956)

Posthumous

Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961)Man and His Symbols (1964)Red Book (2009) Seven Sermons to the Dead (1916)Black Books (2020)

The Collected Works

of C. G. Jung

Psychiatric Studies (1970)Experimental Researche (1973)Psychogenesis of Mental Disease (1960)Freud & Psychoanalysis (1961)Symbols of Transformation (1967, a revision of Psychology of the Unconscious, 1912)Psychological Types (1971)Two Essays on Analytical Psychology (1967)Structure & Dynamics of the Psyche (1969)Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1969)Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self (1969)Civilization in Transition (1970)Psychology and Religion (1970)Psychology and Alchemy (1944)Alchemical Studies (1968)Mysterium Coniunctionis (1970)Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature (1966)Practice of Psychotherapy (1966)Development of Personality (1954)The Symbolic Life (1977)General Bibliography (Revised Edition) (1990)General Index (1979)

People

Jungfrauen

Marie-Louise von FranzBarbara HannahJolande JacobiAniela JafféEmma JungToni Wolff

Colleagues

Sigmund FreudMaria MoltzerWolfgang PauliSabina SpielreinVictor WhiteRichard Wilhelm

Followers

Joseph CampbellJames HillmanErich NeumannMaud OakesJordan PetersonLaurens van der PostSonu ShamdasaniJune SingerAnthony Stevens

Houses

Bollingen TowerC. G. Jung House Museum

Organizations

Bollingen FoundationC. G. Jung Institute in ZürichEranosInt'l Assoc. for Analytical PsychologyInt'l Assoc. for Jungian StudiesJungian Society for Scholarly StudiesPhilemon FoundationPsychology Club Zürich

Popular culture

A Dangerous MethodSynchronicity (albumsong 12)Shadow ManThe Soul KeeperPersona (series)Soul

Other

Archetypal literary criticismArchetypal pedagogyBollingen PrizeBurghölzliI ChingThe Secret of the Golden Flower

Commons page CommonsWikiquote page WikiquoteWikisource page Wikisource texts

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus

 

Jung and the idea of ​​androgyny in human beings

Like all archetypal Jungian representations the anima, in which Jung was interested before the animus, is so named because it emanates from an inner image, an image in the soul, unlike the persona which is a exterior image.

 

Jung, in The Roots of Consciousness (p. 42.) gives a biological explanation for the fact that there is some kind of residue of the character of the opposite sex:

 

“The image of the opposite sex resides, to some extent, in each sex, since biologically it is only the greater number of male genes that tips the scales in the choice of male sex. The smaller number of female genes appears to constitute a female trait which, however, usually remains unconscious due to its quantitative inferiority. "

 

It is on this presence of the two elements male and female that he bases his idea of ​​the androgyny of the human being.

 

This idea of ​​the androgyny of the human being is rooted in the biological and in the conscious-unconscious psychic totality. The unconscious would then have the coloring of the opposite sex. How to recognize and make accessible to experience the manifestations of this archetype?

 

This is one of the subjects on which Jung is least clear. However, with many digressions on the general functioning of the psyche, he gives us indications in several guide books of which we will retain Dialectics of the Self and the Unconscious, The Roots of Consciousness, Aion, and Transference Psychology.First coined by famous psychiatrist Carl Jung, the terms “Anima” and “Animus” refer to the indwelling masculine and feminine energies that we all possess. Specifically, the anima is thought to be the feminine part of a man’s soul, and the animus refers to the masculine part of a female’s soul. Both the anima and animus are ancient archetypes (or raw forms of energy) that every being contains.

 

Let’s explore these parts of us more in depth …

 

The Anima Explained

Derived from Latin meaning “a current of air, wind, breath, the vital principle, life, soul,” the Anima refers to the unconscious feminine dimension of a male which is often forgotten or repressed in daily life.

 

As it’s generally considered taboo to embrace the inner female side, men often fail to fully embody and embrace this fundamental energy. Sadly, if a male does embrace his Anima, he is often criticized as being “a wimp,” “a sissy,” “a fag,” and other horribly derogatory names.

 

However, in the perspective of psychology, in order to fully step into a mature masculine role, a man must go on a quest to explore this inner Divine Feminine energy. In other words, he must unite with the other half of his Soul.

 

Often, this quest results in some sort of projection, that is, trying to find the ideal lover or soul mate in the form of another idealized person. But we can never embody the Anima through another person – only through our own concerted effort. The key realization here is that we must find this force within us, rather than disown it onto another.

 

As described by Jungian Psychologist Dan Johnston, the man who has connected with his feminine Anima displays “tenderness, patience, consideration and compassion.” However, repression of the female element within males often results in a negative Anima that emerges as personality traits such as “vanity, moodiness, bitchiness, and sensitivity to hurt feelings.”

 

Indeed, a man who has failed to embody his Anima also tends to fall prey to emotional numbness and toxic masculine traits such as aggression, ruthlessness, coldness, and a purely rational approach to life.

 

The Animus Explained

The Animus, which is a Latin word that means “the rational soul; life; the mental powers, intelligence,” is the unconscious male dimension in the female psyche. Due to societal, parental, and cultural conditioning, the Animus, or male element within the woman, is often inhibited, restrained, and suppressed.

 

But the Animus isn’t always repressed – sometimes, it is actually over-emphasized and imposed upon women. Take Western society for example. Here is a culture that ruthlessly imposes masculine ideals such as stoicism, emotional numbness, and ruthlessness as ways to excel and succeed in life.

 

All of these external elements can contribute towards a negative Animus, which can reveal itself in a woman’s personality through argumentative tendencies, brutishness, destructiveness, and insensitivity. However, integrating a positive Animus into the female psyche can result in strength, assertiveness, levelheadedness, and rationality.

digital art

My day shooting at Weston State Hospital began at 7:30 AM with shots of the exterior. By 3:30 PM I was hot, worn out and ready to call it a day. Once I decided I was leaving, I stepped into a narrow stairway to go back to the first floor lobby and thank my host for the opportunity. I went to the lowest floor and walked into a wing I hadn't seen at all during the day's shoot. This was one of the shots I got at the end of a hallway. I remember it as being much darker than it is in this image.

 

In Kirkbride design, the buildings are set up in the shape of an inverted "V", much like a flying formation. Each building is connected at its end by a small transition hallway. I still haven't figured out exactly where I was in relation to the main building. I think I was in the furthest wing on the bottom floor.

 

Anyway, It was interesting to see the sign on the door. I took a peek inside and it was just an empty room.

 

This looks best large on black.

Making its Olympic debut at Athens in 1896 with men's shooting being part of the first Games of the modern era and women's shooting being added at Los Angeles in 1984, shooting is a true test of accuracy. It demands intellectual and psychological skill rather than physical strength, with competitions won and lost by a matter of millimetres.

OPUS: Shadows Edge, Mystical Expressionism, Painting with Light, Observation of psychological reality, Perception beyond Appearances, Symbolism, Hidden meaning of shadow, Edge of Perception, Art that raises subjective feelings above objective observations, Brought a new level of emotional intensity, TransExpressionism, Hidden doors of perception, Mystical Photography, ART Avant-garde, Painting with Light, Motion ART, Mirza Ajanovic POETIC Photography, These are Unaltered Images, Not cropped,

The percentage of my photos that are from looking down at the ground probably has some deep psychological meaning

The Postcard

 

A postally unused Photocolour postcard that was printed and published in the mid 1960's by E. T. W. Dennis & Sons of Scarborough and London.

 

The card has a divided back.

 

The Manchester Arena Bombing

 

On the 22nd. May 2017, an Islamist extremist suicide bomber detonated a shrapnel-laden homemade bomb as people were leaving the Manchester Arena following a concert by American singer Ariana Grande.

 

Twenty-three people were killed, including the attacker, and 1,017 were injured, many of them children. Several hundred more suffered psychological trauma.

 

The bomber was Salman Ramadan Abedi, a 22-year-old local man of Libyan ancestry. After initial suspicions of a terrorist network, police later said that they believed Abedi had largely acted alone, but that others had been aware of his plans.

 

In March 2020, the bomber's brother, Hashem Abedi, was found guilty of 22 counts of murder and attempting to murder 1,017 others, and was sentenced to life in prison.

 

The incident was the deadliest terrorist attack and the first suicide bombing in the United Kingdom since the 7th. July 2005 London bombings.

 

The Bombing

 

On the 22nd. May 2017 at 22:15 a member of the public reported Abedi, wearing black clothes and a large rucksack to Showsec security. A security guard observed Abedi, but said that he did not intervene in case his concerns about Abedi were wrong, and out of fear of being considered a racist.

 

The security guard tried to use his radio to alert the security control room, but was unable to get through.

 

Police officers on duty that night were subsequently criticised for their behaviour in the hours leading up to the atrocity - including a two-hour dinner break and a 10-mile round trip to buy a kebab.

 

At one point, when Abedi took his final trip through the station to his hiding place in the foyer, there were no BTP officers on duty in the area.

 

At 22:31 the suicide bomber detonated an improvised explosive device, packed with nuts and bolts to act as shrapnel, in the foyer area of the Manchester Arena.

 

The attack took place after a concert by Ariana Grande that was part of her Dangerous Woman Tour. 14,200 people had attended the concert.

 

Many exiting concert-goers and waiting parents were in the foyer at the time of the explosion. According to evidence presented at the coroner's inquest, the bomb was powerful enough to kill people up to 20 metres (66 ft) away.

 

A report by inquiry chair John Saunders blamed “failings by individuals” for “missed opportunities” to detect and stop bomber Salman Abedi.

 

Saunders outlined a “litany” of failures by venue operators SMG, security firm Showsec and British Transport Police (BTP) - failures that included taking unauthorised two-hour meal breaks and ignoring members of the public who tried to raise the alarm:

 

-- Reconnaissance Oversights

 

Abedi went to the arena several times to carry out hostile reconnaissance in the run-up to the bombing, visiting on the 18th. and 21st. May, and also on the afternoon of the day of the attack.

 

Although arena operator SMG and security firm Showsec “had experience of identifying and responding to potential hostile reconnaissance effectively”, the system for passing on information about suspicious behaviour was “insufficiently robust”.

 

If the Showsec staff on duty at the time, Kyle Lawler and Mohammed Agha - then aged 18 and 19 respectively - had been aware of previous reports of suspicious activity, “it would have increased the possibility” of Abedi being spotted.

 

Inquiry chair Saunders also notes that SMG could have extended the permitted security perimeter from the entrance doors of the arena to the City Room, the foyer where the bomb detonated. The report says:

 

“Had permission to push out the perimeter

been granted, an attack in the City Room

would have been much less likely.”

 

-- Absence of Officers

 

Despite five officers being assigned to the arena on the night of the attack, “there was a complete absence of any BTP officer in the City Room” in the half hour before Abedi detonated the bomb. And no officers were policing the public areas of the venue between 8.58pm and 9.36pm.

 

The report found that BTP officers “took breaks substantially and unjustifiably” longer than their authorised one hour. Instructions to stagger breaks between 7.30pm and 9pm - when younger children could be leaving the venue - were also ignored.

 

The public inquiry into the attack had previously heard how two officers on duty at the concert, PC Jessica Bullough and PCSO Mark Renshaw, had taken a “two-hour-and-nine-minute dinner break to get a kebab five miles from the arena”. The Telegraph reported:

 

"Bullough has since admitted that were

she present on her shift as she should

have been, she would have likely stopped

Abedi and asked him what was in his bag”.

 

-- The CCTV Blindspot

 

Saunders' report says that Abedi chose an “obvious hiding place” in a CCTV blindspot of the arena City Room foyer, having no doubt identified this area during his hostile reconnaissance:

 

“Had the area been covered by CCTV so that

there was no blind spot, it is likely that this

behaviour by Abedi would have been identified

as suspicious by anyone monitoring the CCTV."

 

Giving evidence to the inquiry, Showsec security guard Agha said that he had noticed Abedi in the City Room, but only because he “liked the look” of Abedi's trainers.

 

-- Inadequate Patrols

 

The inquiry report says that:

 

"A further missed opportunity to spot Abedi

in the half hour before the bomb detonated

arose from the absence of an adequate

security patrol by Showsec at any stage

during this time”.

 

The supervisor charged with carrying out “pre-egress” checks, Jordan Beak, did so “only very briefly”, patrolling for about ten minutes, during which he just “looked towards the staircases up to the mezzanine area”, where Abedi was sitting.

 

The report notes:

 

“He did not consider them a very important

part of the check because it was not an

egress route. Mr Beak did not go up on to the

mezzanine area, and so he did not see Abedi.

This was a significant missed opportunity.”

 

-- Concerns ‘Fobbed Off’

 

Saunders wrote that:

 

"The most striking missed opportunity, and the

one that is likely to have made a significant

difference, was an attempt by a member of the

public to raise concerns about Abedi after

becoming suspicious about the bomber's large

and obviously heavy backpack".

 

Christopher Wild told the inquiry how he had spotted Abedi while waiting for his 14-year-old daughter to leave the concert.

 

According to the BBC, Wild recalled how he approached Abedi and said:

 

“It doesn't look very good you know, what you

see with bombs and such, you with a rucksack

in a place like this, what are you doing?”

 

Abedi reportedly told Wild that he was “waiting for somebody, mate”, before asking what time it was.

 

Wild alerted security guard Agha about his suspicions around fifteen minutes before the blast. But according to the inquiry report:

 

"Agha did not take Christopher Wild’s

concerns as seriously as he should have”.

 

Wild felt that he had been “fobbed off” by the guard, who claimed to already be aware of Abedi. Agha is said to have made “inadequate” efforts to flag down his supervisor or pass on the message via his colleague Lawler, who had a radio.

 

Although Agha did share Wild’s concerns with Lawler, the latter “felt conflicted about what to do” and “stated he was fearful of being branded a racist and would be in trouble if he got it wrong”.

 

Lawler ultimately made an attempt to contact a senior supervisor through the radio, but couldn’t get through, and made no further efforts to communicate what he had been told to anyone else. Saunders wrote:

 

“The inadequacy of Mr Lawler’s response

was a product of his failure to take Mr Wild’s

concern and his own observations sufficiently

seriously. Mr Wild’s behaviour was very

responsible. He stated that he formed the

view that Abedi might let a bomb off.

That was sadly all too prescient, and makes

all the more distressing the fact that no effective

steps were taken as a result of his efforts.”

 

Aftermath of the Explosion

 

Three hours after the bombing, police conducted a controlled explosion on a suspicious item of clothing in Cathedral Gardens. This was later confirmed to have been abandoned clothing and not dangerous.

 

Residents and taxi companies in Manchester offered free transport or accommodation via Twitter to those left stranded at the concert.  Parents were separated from their children attending the concert in the aftermath of the explosion.

 

A nearby hotel served as a shelter for people displaced by the bombing, with officials directing separated parents and children there.  Manchester's Sikh temples along with local homeowners, hotels and venues offered shelter to survivors of the attack.

 

Manchester Victoria railway station, which is partly underneath the arena, was evacuated and closed, and services were cancelled. The explosion caused structural damage to the station, which remained closed until the damage had been assessed and repaired, resulting in disruption to train and tram services.

 

Victoria Station reopened eight days later, following the completion of police investigation work and repairs to the fabric of the building.

 

On the 23rd. May, Prime Minister Theresa May announced that the UK's terror threat level had been raised to "critical", its highest level. 

 

In the aftermath of the attack, Operation Temperer was activated for the first time, allowing up to 5,000 soldiers to reinforce armed police in protecting parts of the country.

 

Tours of the Houses of Parliament and the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace were cancelled on 24 May, and troops were deployed to guard government buildings in London.

 

On the 23rd. May, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, via the Nashir Telegram channel, said the attack was carried out by "a soldier of the Khilafah". The message called the attack:

 

"An endeavor to terrorise the mushrikin,

and in response to their transgressions

against the lands of the Muslims."

 

Abedi's sister said that he was motivated by revenge for Muslim children killed by American airstrikes in Syria.

 

The Manchester Arena remained closed until September 2017, with scheduled concerts either cancelled or moved to other venues. It reopened on the 9th. September 2017, with a benefit concert featuring Noel Gallagher and other acts associated with North West England.

 

Later that month, Chris Parker, a homeless man who stole from victims of the attack whilst assisting them, was jailed for 4 years and three months.

 

Casualties of the Attack

 

The explosion killed the attacker and 22 concert-goers and parents who were in the entrance waiting to pick up their children following the show. 119 people were initially reported as injured. This number was revised by police to 250 on the 22nd. June, with the addition of severe psychological trauma and minor injuries.

 

During the public inquiry into the bombing, it was updated in December 2020 to 1,017 people sustaining injuries.

 

The dead included ten people aged under 20; the youngest victim was an eight-year-old girl, and the oldest was a 51-year-old woman. Of the 22 victims, twenty were Britons and two were British-based Polish nationals.

 

North West Ambulance Service reported that 60 of its ambulances attended the scene, carried 59 people to local hospitals, and treated walking wounded on site.  Of those hospitalised, 12 were children under the age of 16.

 

The first doctor thought to have been on scene was an off-duty consultant anaesthetist, Michael Daley. In recognition of his bravery for the role he played in the immediate medical response to the incident, Daley's name was entered into the BMA's Book of Valour in June 2017.

 

The Attacker

 

The bomber, Salman Ramadan Abedi, was a 22-year-old British Muslim of Libyan ancestry. He was born in Manchester to a Salafi family of Libyan-born refugees who had settled in Manchester after fleeing to the UK to escape the government of Muammar Gaddafi.

 

He had two brothers and a sister. He grew up in Whalley Range and lived in Fallowfield. Neighbours described the Abedis as a very traditional and "super religious" family who attended Didsbury Mosque.

 

Abedi attended Wellacre Technology College, Burnage Academy for Boys and The Manchester College. A former tutor remarked that:

 

"Abedi was a very slow, uneducated

and passive person".

 

He was among a group of students at his high school who accused a teacher of Islamophobia for asking them what they thought of suicide bombers. He also reportedly said to his friends that being a suicide bomber "was OK" and fellow college students raised concerns about his behaviour.

 

Abedi's father was a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a Salafi jihadist organisation proscribed by the United Nations, and father and son fought for the group in Libya in 2011 as part of the movement to overthrow Muammar Gaddafi.

 

Abedi's parents, both born in Tripoli, remained in Libya in 2011, while 17-year-old Abedi returned to live in the United Kingdom. He took a gap year in 2014, where he returned with his brother Hashem to Libya to live with his parents. Abedi was injured in Ajdabiya that year while fighting for an Islamist group.

 

The brothers were rescued from Tripoli by the Royal Navy survey ship HMS Enterprise in August 2014 as part of a group of 110 British citizens as the Libyan civil war erupted, taken to Malta and flown back to the UK.

 

According to a retired European intelligence officer, Abedi met with members of the ISIS Battar brigade in Libya, and continued to be in contact with the group upon his return to the UK.

 

An imam at Didsbury mosque recalled that Abedi looked at him "with hate" after he preached against ISIS and Ansar al-Sharia in 2015.

 

Abedi's sister said her brother was motivated by the injustice of Muslim children dying in bombings stemming from the American-led intervention in the Syrian Civil War.

 

A family friend of the Abedi's also remarked that Salman had vowed revenge at the funeral of Abdul Wahab Hafidah, who was run over and stabbed to death by a Manchester gang in 2016 and was a friend of Salman and his younger brother Hashem. Hashem later co-ordinated the Manchester bombing with his brother.

 

According to an acquaintance in the UK, Abedi was "outgoing" and consumed alcohol, while another said that Abedi was a "regular kid who went out and drank" until about 2016. Abedi was also known to have used cannabis.

 

He enrolled at the University of Salford in September 2014, where he studied business administration, before dropping out to work in a bakery. Manchester police believe Abedi used student loans to finance the plot, including travel overseas to learn bomb-making.

 

The Guardian reported that despite dropping out from further education, he was still receiving student loan funding in April 2017. Abedi returned to Manchester on the 18th. May after a trip to Libya and bought bomb-making material, apparently constructing the acetone peroxide-based bomb by himself. Many members of the IS Battar brigade trained people in bomb-making in Libya.

 

He was known to British security services and police but was not regarded as a high risk, having been linked to petty crime but never flagged up for radical views.

 

A community worker told the BBC he had called a hotline five years before the bombing to warn police about Abedi's views and members of Britain's Libyan diaspora said they had "warned authorities for years" about Manchester's Islamist radicalisation.

 

Abedi was allegedly reported to authorities for his extremism by five community leaders and family members, and had been banned from a mosque; the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester, however, said Abedi was not known to the Prevent anti-radicalisation programme.

 

On the 29th. May 2017, MI5 launched an internal inquiry into its handling of the warnings it had received about Abedi and a second, "more in depth" inquiry, into how it missed the danger.

 

On the 22nd. November 2018, a Parliamentary report said that MI5 had acted "too slowly" in its dealings with Abedi. The committee's report noted:

 

"What we can say is that there were a number

of failings in the handling of Salman Abedi's case.

While it is impossible to say whether these would

have prevented the devastating attack on the

22nd. May, we have concluded that as a result of

the failings, potential opportunities to prevent it

were missed."

 

Investigation Into the Bombing

 

The property in Fallowfield where Abedi lived was raided on the 23rd. May. Armed police breached the house with a controlled explosion and searched it. Abedi's 23-year-old brother was arrested in Chorlton-cum-Hardy in south Manchester in relation to the attack.

 

Police carried out raids in two other areas of south Manchester and another address in the Whalley Range area. Three other men were arrested, and police initially spoke of a network supporting the bomber; however they later announced that Abedi had sourced all the bomb components himself, and that they now believed he had largely acted alone. On the 6th. July, police said that they believed others had been aware of Abedi's plans.

 

According to German police sources, Abedi transited through Düsseldorf Airport on his way home to Manchester from Istanbul four days before the bombing. French interior minister Gérard Collomb said that Abedi may have been to Syria, and had "proven" links with IS.

 

Abedi's younger brother and father were arrested by Libyan security forces on the 23rd. and 24th. May respectively. The brother was suspected of planning an attack in Libya, and was said to be in regular touch with Salman, and was aware of the plan to bomb the Manchester Arena, but not the date.

 

According to a Libyan official, the brothers spoke on the phone about 15 minutes before the attack was carried out. On the 1st. November 2017, the UK requested Libya to extradite the bomber's younger brother, Hashem Abedi to the UK in order to face trial for complicity in the murder of the 22 people killed in the explosion.

 

Photographs of the remains of the IED published by The New York Times indicated that it had comprised an explosive charge inside a lightweight metal container which was carried within a black vest or a blue Karrimor backpack.

 

Most of the fatalities occurred in a ring around the bomber. His torso was propelled by the blast through the doors to the arena, indicating that the explosive charge was held in the backpack and blew him forward on detonation. A small device thought to have possibly been a hand-held detonator was also found.

 

The bomb contained the explosive TATP, which had been used in previous bombings. According to Manchester police, the explosive device used by Abedi was the design of a skilled bomb-maker and had a back-up means of detonation. Police also said that Salman Abedi bought most of the bomb components himself, and that he was alone during much of the time before carrying out the Manchester bombing.

 

On the 28th. May, police released images showing Abedi on the night of the bombing, taken from CCTV footage. Further images showed Abedi walking around Manchester with a blue suitcase.

 

According to US intelligence sources, Abedi was identified by the bank card that he had with him and the identification was confirmed using facial recognition technology.

 

A public inquiry into the attack was launched in September 2020. The first of three reports to be produced was a 200-page report published on the 17th. June 2021. It found that:

 

"There were a number of missed opportunities

to alter the course of what happened that night,

and more should have been done by police and

private security guards to prevent the bombing."

 

News Leaks

 

Within hours of the attack, Abedi's name and other information that had been given confidentially to security services in the United States and France was leaked to the news media. This led to condemnation from Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

 

Following the publication of crime scene photographs of the backpack bomb used in the attack in the 24th. May edition of The New York Times, UK counterterrorism police chiefs said the release of the material was detrimental to the investigation.

 

On the 25th. May, Greater Manchester Police said that it had stopped sharing information on the attack with the US intelligence services. Theresa May said she would make clear to President Trump that:

 

"Intelligence that has been

shared must be made secure."

 

Donald Trump described the leaks to the news media as "deeply troubling", and pledged to carry out a full investigation.

 

New York Times editor Dean Baquet declined to apologise for publishing the backpack bomb photographs, saying:

 

"We live in different press worlds.

The material was not classified at

the highest level."

 

On the 26th. May, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the United States government accepted responsibility for the leaks.

 

Links with the Muslim Brotherhood

 

According to a secret recording unveiled by the BBC, Mostafa Graf, the imam of the Didsbury Mosque where Salman Abedi and his family were regulars, made a call for armed jihad ten days before Abedi bought his concert ticket.

 

Following these revelations, the Manchester Police opened an investigation into the mosque and its imam, who also fought with a Libyan Islamist militia. Mostafa Graf is a member of the International Union of Muslim Scholars, an organisation founded by the Muslim Brotherhood and Yusuf al-Qaradawi. Al-Qaradawi is known for having claimed:

 

"Suicide bombings are a duty".

 

Haras Rafiq, head of the Quilliam think tank, told The Guardian that the Muslim Brotherhood runs the Didsbury Mosque.

 

The Didsbury Mosque is controlled by The Islamic Centre (Manchester), an English association headed by Dr. Haytham al-Khaffaf, who is also a director of the Human Relief Foundation, a Muslim Brotherhood organisation blacklisted for terrorism by Israel. Between 2015 and 2016, al-Khaffaf's Human Relief Foundation received over £1.5 million from the Qatar Charity, which is also subject to US counterterrorism surveillance.

 

Trial and Sentencing of Hashem Abedi

 

On the 17th. July 2019, Salman Abedi's brother Hashem was charged with murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to cause an explosion. He had been arrested in Libya and extradited to the UK.

 

His trial began on the 5th. February 2020. On the 17th. March, Hashem Abedi was found guilty on 22 charges of murder, on the grounds that he had helped his brother to source the materials used in the bombing, and had assisted with the manufacture of the explosives which were used in the attack.

 

On the 20th. August, Hashem Abedi was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 55 years. The judge, Mr Justice Jeremy Baker, said that sentencing rules prevented him from imposing a whole life order as Abedi had been 20 years old at the time of the offence. The minimum age for a whole life order is 21 years old. Abedi's 55-year minimum term is the longest minimum term ever imposed by a British court.

 

Ismail Abedi

 

In October 2021 it was reported that Salman Abedi's older brother Ismail had left the UK despite being summonsed by Sir John Saunders to testify before the public inquiry into the bombing. Saunders had refused Ismail Abedi's request for immunity from prosecution while testifying.

 

Ariana Grande

 

Ariana Grande posted on Twitter:

 

"Broken. from the bottom of my

heart, i am so so sorry. i don't

have words."

 

The tweet briefly became the most-liked tweet in history. Grande suspended her tour and flew back to her mother's home in Florida.

 

On the 9th. July 2017, a performance to benefit the Manchester bombing victims was held in New York City's The Cutting Room, called "Break Free: United for Manchester", with Broadway theatre and television performers interpreting Ariana Grande songs.

 

On the 4th. June, Ariana Grande hosted a benefit concert in Manchester, entitled "One Love Manchester" at Old Trafford Cricket Ground that was broadcast live on television, radio and social media.

 

At the concert, Grande performed along with several other high-profile artists. Free tickets were offered to those who had attended the show on the 22nd. May. The benefit concert and associated Red Cross fund raised £10 million for victims of the attack, and £17 million by August. New York's Vulture section ranked the event as the No. 1 concert of 2017.

 

The Kerslake Report

 

On the 27th. March 2018, a report by Bob Kerslake named the "Kerslake Report" was published. The report was an independent review into the preparedness for, and emergency response to, the Manchester Arena attack on the 22nd. May 2017.

 

In the report, Kerslake "largely praised" the Greater Manchester Police and British Transport Police, and noted that it was "fortuitous" that the North West Ambulance Service was unaware of the declaration of Operation Plato, a protocol under which all responders should have withdrawn from the arena in case of an active killer on the premises.

 

However, it found that the Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service was "brought to a point of paralysis" as their response was delayed for two hours due to poor communication between the firefighters' liaison officer and the police force.

 

The report was critical of Vodafone for the "catastrophic failure" of an emergency helpline hosted on a platform provided by Content Guru, saying that delays in getting information caused "significant stress and upset" to families.

 

It also expressed criticism of some news media, saying:

 

"To have experienced such intrusive and

overbearing behaviour at a time of such

enormous vulnerability seemed to us to

be completely and utterly unacceptable".

 

However, it was also noted that:

 

"We recognise that this was some, but by

no means all of the media, and that the

media also have a positive and important

role to play."

 

Memorial to the Bombing

 

The victims of the bombing are commemorated by The Glade of Light, a garden memorial located in Manchester city centre near Manchester Cathedral. The memorial opened to the public in January 2022.

 

The memorial was vandalised on the 9th. February 2022, causing £10,000 of damage. A 24-year-old man admitted to the offence in April and will be sentenced at a later date.

 

The 2018 Manchester Terror Attack

 

The Manchester Arena is next to Victoria Station, and in fact partly above it. Victoria Station witnessed a subsequent terror attack on the 31st. December 2018 at 20.52.

 

Mahdi Mohamud, a 25 year old man from Somalia stabbed three people in a knife attack at the station. He appears to have acted alone.

 

Mohamud shouted "Allah!" and "Long live the Caliphate!" during the attack, and "Allahu Akbar" after being arrested. A witness alleged that during the attack he also shouted a slogan criticising Western governments. BBC producer Sam Clack reported that he heard Mohamud saying:

 

"As long as you keep bombing other

countries this sort of s--- is going to

keep happening,"

 

Mohamud had lived in England for about 10 years, and resided in Manchester's Cheetham neighbourhood with his parents and siblings.

 

Two of the three victims, a couple in their 50's who had come into town to celebrate the New Year, were hospitalised with serious injuries. The third victim was a British Transport Police officer who received a stab wound to his shoulder.

 

Despite suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, Mohamud was convicted of a terror offence and the attempted murder of three people, due to his possession of significant amounts of extremist material and the attack's extensive planning. He pleaded guilty to three counts of attempted murder and a terror offence.

 

The perpetrator, who was initially detained under the Mental Health Act, was sentenced to life imprisonment in a high-security psychiatric hospital.

 

The Second Inquiry into the Arena Bombing

 

On the 3rd. November 2022, inquiry chair Sir John Saunders issued a second report into the atrocity. Within the 884 pages he said that the emergency services failed to communicate properly in response to the incident, stemming from 'failures to prepare.'

 

He concluded that "Failing" emergency services thought a terror attack "could never happen" before the Manchester Arena bombing.

 

Sir John Saunders said the majority of those who died were so badly injured they could not have survived. However, it is believed that two of the 22 fatalities could have recovered if they had received better medical care.

 

Pointing the finger at leaders of the police, fire and ambulance services, he said:

 

“On the night of the attack, multi‐agency

communication between the three

emergency services was non‐existent.

That failure played a major part in what

went wrong.”

 

He added:

 

“There had been failures to prepare. There

had been inadequacies in training.

Well-established principles had not been

ingrained in practice.

Why was that? Partly it was because, despite

the fact that the threat of a terrorist attack was

at a very high level on the 22nd. May 2017, no

one really thought it could happen to them.”

 

The report also paid tribute to the “heroic” actions of ordinary members of the public who joined police and security and medical teams trying to save lives in a “war zone”.

 

Sir John said that two fatalities, John Atkinson, 28, and the youngest victim, eight year old Saffie-Rose Roussos, did have a chance of survival. Sir John said:

 

“I have concluded that one of those who

died, John Atkinson would probably have

survived had the emergency response

been better.”

 

He added:

 

“In the case of Saffie Rose Roussos, I have

concluded that there was a remote possibility

that she could have been saved if the rescue

operation had been conducted differently.”

 

The inquiry heard that only three paramedics went into the City Room after the attack. Crews from Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service took more than two hours to attend the Arena.

 

Sir John added:

 

“GMP (Greater Manchester Police) did not

lead the response in accordance with the

guidance that it had been given or parts of

its own plans.

Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service

(GMFRS) failed to turn up at the scene at a

time when they could provide the greatest

assistance.

North West Ambulance Service (NWAS) failed

to send sufficient paramedics into the City

Room.

NWAS did not use available stretchers to

remove casualties in a safe way, and did not

communicate their intentions sufficiently to

those who were in the City Room.”

 

Despite highlighting a series of failings, he said that:

 

"There were some parts of the emergency

response that worked well, and that no doubt

lives were saved”.

 

Paying tribute to those who helped the victims, he said:

 

“The heroism shown by very many people

that night is striking. I have seen the terrible

footage from the CCTV and body-worn video

cameras of the scene of devastation in the City

Room.

The description of that area as being like a

“warzone” was used by a number of witnesses.

That is an accurate description. To enter the

City Room or remain there to help victims

required great courage.”

 

Sir John added:

 

“At the centre of my Inquiry is the terrible loss

of twenty two lives. Each family and each person

at the Arena has a deeply personal story to tell

about the impact of the attack on them.

My report cannot change what has happened.

My intention is to uncover what went wrong and

find ways of improving practices so that no one

has to suffer such terrible pain and loss again.”

 

The report also stated that responsibility for the deaths lies with suicide bomber Salman Abedi, 22, and his brother Hashem, 25, who is serving life behind bars for his part in the plot.

 

The inquiry found that the brothers had “planned to cause as much harm to as many people as they could" when Abedi exploded his home made device.

The Lockheed EC-121 Warning Star was a United States Navy and United States Air Force Airborne early warning and control radar surveillance aircraft. A military version of the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation, it was designed to serve as an airborne early warning system to supplement the Distant Early Warning Line, using two large radomes, a vertical dome above and a horizontal one below the fuselage. EC-121s were also used for intelligence gathering (SIGINT).

 

It was introduced in 1954 and retired from service in 1978, although a single specially modified EW aircraft remained in service with the U.S. Navy until 1982. The U.S. Navy versions when initially procured were designated WV-1 (PO-1W), WV-2, and WV-3. Warning Stars of the U.S. Air Force served during the Vietnam War as both electronic sensor monitors and as a forerunner to the Boeing E-3 Sentry AWACS. U.S. Air Force aircrews adopted the civil nickname, "Connie" (diminutive of Constellation) as reference, while naval aircrews used the term "Willie Victor" based on a slang version of the NATO alphabet and the naval version of the aircraft's pre-1962 designation of WV-1, WV-2 or WV-3.

  

Development:

Since 1943 the Lockheed Constellation had been in USAAF service as the C-69. The use of the Constellation by the U.S. Navy for patrol and airborne early warning duties was first investigated in 1949, when the Navy acquired two Lockheed L-749 Constellations. First flown on 9 June 1949, the PO-1W carried large, long-range radars in massive radomes above and below the fuselage. As the radomes produced considerable more side area, the fins of the PO-1W had to be increased. After the PO-1W, which was redesignated WV-1 in 1952, had proved that it was possible to operate large radars on aircraft, the U.S. Navy ordered the WV-2 based on the L-1049 Super Constellation. The WV-1s were later transferred to the Federal Aviation Agency in 1958–1959.

 

The WV-2/EC-121D was initially fitted with a dorsal AN/APS-45 height finder radar and a ventral AN/APS-20 air search radar. These radars were later upgraded to AN/APS-103 and AN/APS-95 radars, although not simultaneously. The crew commonly numbered 18, six officers (two pilots, two navigators, two weapons controllers) and 12 enlisted personnel (two flight engineers, one radio operator, two crew chiefs, five radar operators, two radar technicians). However, when North Korea shot down a Navy EC-121 in 1969, a crew of 31 was on board.

 

Orders were placed totaling 142 PO-2W Constellations based on the Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation with deliveries beginning in 1953. The type was redesignated WV-2 in 1954. The WV-2 was familiarly known to its crews as "Willy Victor". In 1962, with standardization of aircraft designations within the Department of Defense, the WV-2 then became the EC-121K. A total of 13 of these were converted to WV-2Q electronic intelligence aircraft (which became EC-121M in 1962), and nine were converted to WV-3 weather reconnaissance aircraft (WC-121N in 1962). The EC-121K was also operated by Training Squadron 86 (VT-86) at NAS Glynco, Georgia for training of Student Naval Flight Officers destined to fly both the EC-121 and the Grumman E-2 Hawkeye. When NAS Glynco was closed and VT-86 transferred to NAS Pensacola, Florida in 1973, the squadron's last EC-121 was also flown to NAS Pensacola for transfer to the collection of the National Museum of Naval Aviation where it remains today. A single aircraft became an NC-121K, an electronic warfare variant assigned to Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 33 (VAQ-33) at NAS Key West, Florida. This aircraft was the last EC-121 in operational service, flying until 25 June 1982.

 

The Air Force received 10 RC-121C and 74 EC-121D Warning Stars also based on the L-1049 beginning with diversions from the Navy contracts in October 1953. The 10 RC-121Cs became trainers, designated TC-121C. Between 1966 and 1969, 30 retired Navy EC-121s were transferred to the USAF and converted in EC-121Rs as sensor-monitoring aircraft. Of the 74 EC-121s, 42 were converted to the EC-121H upgrade beginning in 1962, and in 1969, 15 of the remaining EC-121Ds and seven of the EC-121Hs were further upgraded into the final operational variant, the EC-121T, which served as an AWACS prototype in Southeast Asia in 1972. Five EC-121Ds were modified to be broadcasting aircraft for psychological warfare operations, the predecessors of the EC-130 Commando Solo.

  

Operational service:

U.S. Navy-

WV-2s served from 1956 to 1965 in two "barrier" forces, one off each coast of the North American continent. These barrier forces consisted of five surface picket stations each manned by radar destroyer escorts and an air wing of WV-2s that patrolled the picket lines at 1,000-4,000 m (3,000-12,000 ft) altitude in six- to 20-hour missions. Their objective was to extend early warning coverage against surprise Soviet bomber and missile attack as an extension of the DEW Line.

 

The Atlantic Barrier (BarLant) consisted of two rotating squadron detachments, VW-13 and VW-15 home based at NAS Patuxent River, MD. and one squadron, VW-11, permanently based at Naval Station Argentia, Newfoundland. The mission was to fly orbits to the Azores and back. There was an AEW Training Unit based at NAS Patuxent River, Maryland. BarLant began operations on 1 July 1956, and flew continuous coverage until early 1965. The Barrier was shifted to cover the approaches between Greenland, Iceland, and the United Kingdom (GIUK) barrier in June 1961. Aircraft from Argentia were staged through NAS Keflavik, Iceland, to extend coverage times.

 

The Pacific Barrier (BarPac) began operations with one squadron based at NAS Barbers Point, Hawaii, operating from a deployment base at Naval Station Midway, on 1 July 1958. Its orbits overlapped the radar picket stations of the ships of Escort Squadron Seven (CORTRON SEVEN), from roughly Adak Island to Midway. Normally four or five WV-2s were required at any single time to provide coverage over the entire line.

 

Barrier Force operations were discontinued by September 1965 and their EC-121K aircraft placed in storage. However Navy EC-121 operations continued until 1975 in four other squadrons. VQ-1 and VQ-2 operated EC-121M intelligence gathering aircraft at NAF Atsugi, Japan, and Naval Station Rota, Spain, respectively. VW-4 operated Willy Victors between 1954 and 1975 as Hurricane Hunters, with its primary base at NAS Jacksonville, Florida and a forward base at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, while its Pacific counterpart, VW-1, flew out of Agana, Guam, tracking typhoons. The aircraft was also operated by Training Squadron 86 (VT-86) at NAS Glynco, Georgia for training Student Naval Flight Officers and by Tactical Electronic Warfare Squadron 33 (VAQ-33) for the Fleet Electronic Warfare Systems Group (FEWSG) at NAS Norfolk, Virginia and later at NAS Key West, Florida. At the time of its retirement on June 25, 1982 VAQ-33 aircraft (Buno 141292) was the last NC-121K operated by the Navy.

  

Variants:

U.S. Navy variants-

*WV-1

Two prototypes, L-749A Constellation, designated PO-1W before 1952

*EC-121K (WV-2)

Main USN variant, designated PO-2W before 1952; 244 ordered, 142 produced (the rest went to the USAF).

*JC-121K

One modified EC-121K used as a U.S. Army avionics testbed

*NC-121K

Unknown number modified as special mission aircraft

*YEC-121K

One modified avionics testbed

*EC-121L (WV-2E)

One modified WV-2, testbed for rotating radar dome with an AN/APS-70 radar

*EC-121M (WV-2Q)

Electronic intelligence collection variant, 13 modified WV-2

*WC-121N (WV-3)

Weather reconnaissance variant, eight modified WV-2

*EC-121P

Unknown number modified from EC-121K as anti-submarine variant

*JEC-121P

Three EC-121P used by the USAF

 

U.S. Air Force variants-

*RC-121C

10 produced, initial USAF variant

*JC-121C

Two converted from C-121C and one TC-121C as avionics testbeds

*TC-121C

Nine RC-121C modified before 1962 as crew trainers

*EC-121D

73 produced 1953-55 as main USAF variant and one converted from C-121C, originally designated RC-121D

*EC-121D Quick Look

One testbed for QRC-248 IFF transponder interrogator

*EC-121H

42 USAF upgrades in 1962, 35 EC-121D and seven WV-2s transferred from the Navy

*EC-121J

Two USAF EC-121D modified with upgraded electronics

*EC-121M Rivet Top

One EC-121D testbed for Rivet Gym cryptologic linguist electronics suite, originally designated EC-121K

*EC-121Q

Four EC-121D modified with upgraded electronics for USAF Gold Digger missions

*EC-121R

30 EC-121K / EC-121P transferred to USAF in 1966–1967 and converted to Batcat sensor signal processor

*EC-121S

Five converted for Pennsylvania Air National Guard from USAF C-121 transports

*EC-121T

Final USAF variant. A total of 22 Ts were converted from 15 EC-121D and seven EC-121H. One is on display at Peterson Air and Space Museum.

*XW2V-1

Proposed naval development with new features such as four Allison T56-A8 turboprop engines, L-1649A Starliner wings and Bomarc missiles for defense. None built; was designated L-084 due to the large differences from its predecessors. (wiki)

  

141309 is on display at the McClellan Aviation Museum marked as USAF EC-121D 53-0552. Photo Credit's: photo by S.W. Robbins. (Kodachrome Slide dated December 1982)

During the late 16th and 17th centuries in France, male impotence was considered a crime, as well as legal grounds for a divorce. The practice, which involved inspection of the complainants by court experts, was declared obscene in 1677. John R. Brinkley initiated a boom in male impotence cures in the U.S. in the 1920s and 1930s. His radio programs recommended expensive goat gland implants and "mercurochrome" injections as the path to restored male virility, including operations by surgeon Serge Voronoff. Modern drug therapy for ED made a significant advance in 1983, when British physiologist Giles Brindley dropped his trousers and demonstrated to a shocked Urodynamics Society audience his papaverine-induced erection. The drug Brindley injected into his penis was a non-specific vasodilator, an alpha-blocking agent, and the mechanism of action was clearly corporal smooth muscle relaxation. The effect that Brindley discovered established the fundamentals for the later development of specific, safe, and orally effective drug therapies.

Erectile dysfunction (ED), also known as impotence, is a type of sexual dysfunction characterized by the inability to develop or maintain an erection of the penis during sexual activity. Erectile dysfunction can have psychological consequences as it can be tied to relationship difficulties and self-image. The most important organic causes of impotence are cardiovascular disease and diabetes, neurological problems (for example, trauma from prostatectomy surgery), hormonal insufficiencies (hypogonadism) and drug side effects. Psychological impotence is where erection or penetration fails due to thoughts or feelings (psychological reasons) rather than physical impossibility; this is somewhat less frequent but can often be helped. In psychological impotence, there is a strong response to placebo treatment. Besides treating the underlying causes such as potassium deficiency or arsenic contamination of drinking water, the first line treatment of erectile dysfunction consists of a trial of PDE5 inhibitor (such as sildenafil). In some cases, treatment can involve prostaglandin tablets in the urethra, injections into the penis, a penile prosthesis, a penis pump or vascular reconstructive surgery. Erectile dysfunction is characterized by the regular or repeated inability to obtain or maintain an erection.

Causes

Medications (antidepressants, such as SSRIs, and nicotine[citation needed] are most common)

Neurogenic disorders

Cavernosal disorders (Peyronie's disease)

Hyperprolactinemia (e.g., due to a prolactinoma)

Psychological causes: performance anxiety, stress, and mental disorders

Surgery

Aging. It is four times more common in men aged in their 60s than those in their 40s.

Kidney failure

Diseases such as diabetes mellitus and multiple sclerosis (MS). While these two causes have not been proven they are likely suspects as they cause issues with both the blood flow and nervous systems. Lifestyle: smoking is a key cause of erectile dysfunction. Smoking causes impotence because it promotes arterial narrowing. Surgical intervention for a number of conditions may remove anatomical structures necessary to erection, damage nerves, or impair blood supply. Erectile dysfunction is a common complication of treatments for prostate cancer, including prostatectomy and destruction of the prostate by external beam radiation, although the prostate gland itself is not necessary to achieve an erection. As far as inguinal hernia surgery is concerned, in most cases, and in the absence of postoperative complications, the operative repair can lead to a recovery of the sexual life of patients with preoperative sexual dysfunction, while, in most cases, it does not affect patients with a preoperative normal sexual life. ED can also be associated with bicycling due to both neurological and vascular problems due to compression. The increase risk appears to be about 1.7-fold. Concerns that use of pornography can cause erectile dysfunction have not been substantiated in epidemiological studies according to a 2015 literature review. However, another review and case studies article maintains that use of pornography does indeed cause erectile dysfunction, and critiques the previously described literature review. Penile erection is managed by two mechanisms: the reflex erection, which is achieved by directly touching the penile shaft, and the psychogenic erection, which is achieved by erotic or emotional stimuli. The former uses the peripheral nerves and the lower parts of the spinal cord, whereas the latter uses the limbic system of the brain. In both cases, an intact neural system is required for a successful and complete erection. Stimulation of the penile shaft by the nervous system leads to the secretion of nitric oxide (NO), which causes the relaxation of smooth muscles of corpora cavernosa (the main erectile tissue of penis), and subsequently penile erection. Additionally, adequate levels of testosterone (produced by the testes) and an intact pituitary gland are required for the development of a healthy erectile system. As can be understood from the mechanisms of a normal erection, impotence may develop due to hormonal deficiency, disorders of the neural system, lack of adequate penile blood supply or psychological problems. Spinal cord injury causes sexual dysfunction including ED. Restriction of blood flow can arise from impaired endothelial function due to the usual causes associated with coronary artery disease, but can also be caused by prolonged exposure to bright light. It is analyzed in several ways: Obtaining full erections at some times, such as nocturnal penile tumescence when asleep (when the mind and psychological issues, if any, are less present), tends to suggest that the physical structures are functionally working. Other factors leading to erectile dysfunction are diabetes mellitus (causing neuropathy). There are no formal tests to diagnose erectile dysfunction. Some blood tests are generally done to exclude underlying disease, such as hypogonadism and prolactinoma. Impotence is also related to generally poor physical health, poor dietary habits, obesity, and most specifically cardiovascular disease such as coronary artery disease and peripheral vascular disease. Therefore, a thorough physical examination is helpful, in particular the simple search for a previously undetected groin hernia since it can affect sexual functions in men and is easily curable. A useful and simple way to distinguish between physiological and psychological impotence is to determine whether the patient ever has an erection. If never, the problem is likely to be physiological; if sometimes (however rarely), it could be physiological or psychological. The current diagnostic and statistical manual of mental diseases (DSM-IV) has included a listing for impotence.

Duplex ultrasound

Duplex ultrasound is used to evaluate blood flow, venous leak, signs of atherosclerosis, and scarring or calcification of erectile tissue. Injecting prostaglandin, a hormone-like stimulator produced in the body, induces the erection. Ultrasound is then used to see vascular dilation and measure penile blood pressure.

Penile nerves function

Tests such as the bulbocavernosus reflex test are used to determine if there is sufficient nerve sensation in the penis. The physician squeezes the glans (head) of the penis, which immediately causes the anus to contract if nerve function is normal. A physician measures the latency between squeeze and contraction by observing the anal sphincter or by feeling it with a gloved finger inserted past the anus.

Nocturnal penile tumescence (NPT)

It is normal for a man to have five to six erections during sleep, especially during rapid eye movement (REM). Their absence may indicate a problem with nerve function or blood supply in the penis. There are two methods for measuring changes in penile rigidity and circumference during nocturnal erection: snap gauge and strain gauge. A significant proportion of men who have no sexual dysfunction nonetheless do not have regular nocturnal erections.

Penile biothesiometry

This test uses electromagnetic vibration to evaluate sensitivity and nerve function in the glans and shaft of the penis.

Dynamic infusion cavernosometry (DICC)

technique in which fluid is pumped into the penis at a known rate and pressure. It gives a measurement of the vascular pressure in the corpus cavernosum during an erection.

Corpus cavernosometry

Cavernosography measurement of the vascular pressure in the corpus cavernosum. Saline is infused under pressure into the corpus cavernosum with a butterfly needle, and the flow rate needed to maintain an erection indicates the degree of venous leakage. The leaking veins responsible may be visualized by infusing a mixture of saline and x-ray contrast medium and performing a cavernosogram.[20] In Digital Subtraction Angiography (DSA), the images are acquired digitally.

Magnetic resonance angiography (MRA)

This is similar to magnetic resonance imaging. Magnetic resonance angiography uses magnetic fields and radio waves to provide detailed images of the blood vessels. Doctors may inject a "contrast agent" into the patient's bloodstream that causes vascular tissues to stand out against other tissues. The contrast agent provides for enhanced information regarding blood supply and vascular anomalies.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erectile_dysfunction

Beinasco__Holga TLR __ Fuji pro160C

A wish for the New Year 2009: Loving Kindness ..... may its radiance continue to permeate our world.....and increase all year as we continue our journey together on planet Earth. Best wishes to all Flickr friends and family! Here is my (um, well....rather LONG) story about this picture, taken with a little Olympus Camedia 3.2 under low light conditions at the Musee de Cluny in Paris. But....no need to read the BOOK I wrote if you don't want to because:

 

The SHORT description of this image is in the comment box below!!!

SCROLL DOWN!! :-)

 

In this fascinating site of ancient Roman thermal baths - in the Latin Quarter of Paris - I noticed these small sculptures that emanated such a sweet kindness! they were placed in front of gorgeous Medieval tapestries, in the room next to the exhibit of the world famous French tapestries known by the name of The Lady with the Unicorn. Today Christmas Eve December 24, 2006, I let these little sculptures' sweetness be my messengers of kind thoughts to you and your families for the holidays.

 

No matter what religion one might believe in there are universal values we all enjoy and share and here we have one of the most cherished: the unconditional tenderness for one another which is what truly makes us human! This sweet sculpture was made by the hands of a person living in the 1400's. Mary the legendary mother of the symbolic bearer of Light is wearing her crown. In the Western esoteric teachings of the energy body, this crown refers to the seventh center of consciousness, at the top of the head. In transpersonal psychology the 'birth of Christ' symbolizes the birth of a new consciousness. One sees many birth stories in the history of human spirituality. For example the Tibetans speak of the immaculate birth of Padmasambhava, born from lotus flower rising out of a lake, the ancient Egyptians spoke of a 'lotus born' as well, the Buddhists have the story of Buddha, born miraculously from the side of his mother.

 

In acupuncture theory (a very ancient Chinese healing modality) the crown chakra is designated by the acupuncture point GV 20 (the governing vessel 20). The opening of this center of the esoteric nervous system, along with the heart center at CV 17 (conception vessel 17), throat center, and third eye center give human being the capacity to love without attachment. The ancient religions of the Indian subcontinent speak of these centers of the energy body as chakras. Sufism, the esoteric branch of Islam speaks of this body, and the esoteric teachings of Judaism, the Kabalah, describes it. The Hopi Indians of Northern America speak of the four wheels. Many traditions throughout human history have been aware of the energy body and have words and definitions for it.

 

Mary and her little child are symbolic of this very special high love we are all capable of. It saves us from degenerating into our more primitive brains and gives us the capacity for tolerance and understanding. Wherever and whenever Human Being expresses this high love we have kindness, peace, and creativity! Our human capacity for love is truly a gift from the Great Spirit, one could say, or another way of putting it is that this capacity for unconditional love is our birthright, and part of the Mystery of the wondrous universe we inhabit.

 

One learns of this High Love in all religions. There are celebrations in all the religions that honor this highest of consciousnesses and celebrates it. The rituals surrounding this deep understanding of human consciousness and Heart ride on the seasons, marking the phases of the moon and the turning of the planet on its axis in the solar system, as human beings gather to remember their highest potential and show gratitude for all good things. In this way our interior psychological and spiritual life is tied to the rhythms of the solar system: inner and outer come together in a beautiful way throughout the seasons of the year.

 

Now it is the deep winter solstice time, when the nights are the longest in the northern hemisphere and we celebrate the return of the light in reality and symbolically, on many levels. How wondrous this is! All the best to you and our dear planet Earth!

If there is a psychological trauma of the potential ego, an escape

from that reality is a dream. A dream regenerates one’s own body,

mind, and memory. I can do anything in a dream, and I am the director, the protagonist, the dead one, and also the teacher in the dream.

Repetitive phantom of the dream...Is the fear a reflection of or an

appeal to my weakness?

 

The worlds hung across the horizontal line’s space of light, which is spread infinitely in a dream, is human history, and Is also an expression of each one’s life that is neither beautiful nor grand.

Separation, waiting, and tears. I close my eyes to the sadness of

the emotions inside a human being’s essential ego, and I fall

asleep while dreaming. I enter into a space where time and space

exist, and where nobody exists at the end of the world. There is a

girl, a soldier, a woman who got hurt, and a boy coming from an

unknown time in the space. If light exists within the quadrangle

landscape in the space, that light must be the voice that represents

the ego in reality.

 

A faint memory of childhood gives me comfort in the space of light.

Lost things and vanished traces torture me. A spray of sunset, the

shade of a spindle tree under the sun, and a song of stars heard in a

cliff cave make me happy and paralyze me in the painful reality. The light. The light that I see in the distance as I pass through a path of

darkness. The light that finally touches me in the hill of the labyrinthafter staying alone in the forest for days. That is the comfort,

consolation, and friends of my ego. I am laughing in the hill of light.

It is we or I who are living in different dreams and ideals in one space.

Both have reality and unreality. A song of joy, anger, sorrow, and

happiness happening in one space begins from the study of light,

which everybody is looking at. The story of me that I see through

fragments of memory seems like the story of us, namely, the story of

this world. There is misfortune and hardship given to a person from

one’s birth, and separation, rendezvous, and many stories in betweenall these. I find a connection to the reality of ethnicity.

 

Through the story of me shown in the space of a dream, I am able to

sympathize with our reality that is full of division, ideology, and an

embarrassing past, like my story, and I cry at the stories. These

expressions are the shapes of the lessons that I have learned from

my experience and the agony in my life.

 

Such expressions of agony create a new space, and let you experience a glimpse of the ecstasy that comes from heartbreaking trials.

 

Light is a key and a result of this ecstasy. Eternity also means finiteness.

 

The meaning of eternal light is the pursuit of new light, the comfort

of an imperfect ego, and a fruit of the ideals that humans seek

through the spiritual world of ego, which illustrates the reality, ideals,

and dreams transcending time and space.