Category Archives: Nihilism

[Editors Note: The following review contains spoilers for Rick and Morty Season 5, Episode 2, Mortiplicity.]

The multiverse is a concept linked with Rick and Morty more closely than maybe any other show on TV. When troubles brewing, a leap to an alternate reality is almost certainly around the corner. So its equal parts surprising and exciting when the show manages to craft itself an episode-spanning problem thats self-contained. In this weeks Mortiplicity, all that havoc is weirdly both confined to a single idea and sprawling so wide that Rick has to take a quick breather to draw up a diagram and explain. All of it adds up to an exquisite execution of a deceptively simple idea. Its the best the show has been in a while.

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Mortiplicity starts with (what seems like) a standard Smith dining room volley of ambitious plans, family insults, and unexpected visitors. As does happen sometimes, the intruders wipe out the breakfasting quintet before they can even get out of the room. This attack sets off a wave of nested showdowns between Decoy Families (those that Rick has placed in strategic locations) and the families who assume that theyre the ones at the top of the chain, responsible for eliminating all the fake versions of them below.

As these encounters start to complicate themselves, with Decoys making their own Decoys, that chain starts to branch out in the wildest of ways, with links of every size and shape traveling in every direction. Before long, fake Smiths start mutating to the point where they all realize theyre the very thing theyre trying to hunt.

Like last weeks season premiere, Mortiplicity is proof that the show is at its most enjoyable when its paced just right. This doesnt necessarily mean tear through enough plot and branching timelines in a way that will have Reddit timeline constructors going berserk for weeks, but here thats more of a natural byproduct than a driving goal. For as much chaos as there is in this Mandelbrot set of fractal clone warfare, its all outlined in a way thats surprisingly clear to follow despite the overall story going into overdrive. When sets of families are firing lasers at each other across the Smith house (or a version of one, anyway), its easy to identify one as the Living Room set and the other as the Kitchen set. They may have nearly identical personalities, but episode writer Albro Lundy sets up an attacker/defender dynamic in each of these smaller battles that gives purpose to each new wrinkle.

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Mortiplicity is very careful to only play the Wait, which ones which? card in calculated situations. That the answer is It doesnt matter because theyre all about to get neutralized by an interdimensional molecule zapper certainly helps. (It wouldnt be a top-tier Rick and Morty without a heaping helping of nihilism.) Even in those repetitions, theres a constant escalation happening that gives this episode the perfect kind of forward momentum.

Rick and Morty

Theres also admirable restraint in Mortiplicity by not going after the low-hanging pop-culture clone story fruit. Theres no overextended Michael Keaton riff when the concept of degenerating copy of copies decoys comes up. In line with the rest of the episodes, the quick Westworld/Ex Machina two-fer becomes a way to differentiate between families while also calling out Ricks referential tendencies. If anything, Rick pausing to explain his own Highlander joke is the closest the episode comes to getting sidetracked, but its also being delivered in front of a whiteboard illustration that anyone can choose to unpack instead.

Its no coincidence that one of the shows best episodes in years keeps the entire family together. Maybe its weird to say that every Smith family member gets a chance to shine, given that one of Summers spotlight moments is her slowly plunging a dagger into the chest of someone who looks just like her. Still, seeing Marionette Beth in charge of the underground resistance and Marionette Jerry becoming a breeding ground for a colony of beavers in that truly deranged extended tag are ideal ways to give the usual Rick/Morty dynamic a needed break.

Having four-plus seasons of this show under its belt is also a built-in advantage. The Smith family are no strangers to being confronted with themselves, so Mortiplicity actually ends up benefiting from everyone just going with the premise that people who look like them are bent on their destruction (and that the objective is mutual). With the time that saves, the episode can make room for little treats like the bucket list conversation (on behalf of everyone else who shares your wish, Jerry, we see you and you are loved) and the montage of Decoys all discovering their non-human parts. (Correct me if Im wrong, but how has it taken this long for a Rick to operate on his own brain?)

The skill demonstrated here isnt just in the written setups and payoffs, but in Lucas Grays direction, too. The execution of the Giant Blue Geodesic Hologram Rick (assuming thats what the name of the inevitable Funko Pop is going to be) is as much of a delight as the Leatherface Ricks skin lair is horrifying. (Seriously, between this and that one Hannibal episode, were good on demented torturers slowly separating people from their own flesh plotlines for another decade or so.) The one-two punch of the Sesame Street Smiths existence and the reveal that theyre giant mascot suits as part of a ploy to be too cute to be annihilated is about the point when Mortiplicity proves that its about to sustain its high-concept balancing act for the entire runtime.

Theres even a Keith David cameo! Thats like having a tiny, perfectly portioned dessert after a hearty meal. Not only that, but no other detail goes unwasted. You could make the argument that Mr. Always Want to Be Hunted is a Mr. Poopybutthole decoy of his own if youre gonna steal, steal from the best but how was the show going to introduce a character like that and not pay off the name? The pairing of him and the episodes first joke (Were gonna kill God) is the most thrilling kind of opening to a story: one that tells you everything thats about to unfold before you even realize it.

Rick and Morty airs Sunday nights at 11:30 p.m. ET on Adult Swim.

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Rick and Morty Review: Mortiplicity Is the Shows Most Exciting Episode in Years - Yahoo Entertainment

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Things are looking up for music fans. As cities ease COVID restrictions, more and more shows are being booked for the summer and fall. In the meantime, though, you can enjoy the one constant over the last 15-plus months: Valley artists churning out great new music. Here are our picks for the best songs of the month.

As frontman CJ Jacobson told New Times late last year, Paper Foxes spent COVID collaborating as a whole, finding ways to "move forward together." Now, in one of the first pieces of music the band's released in sometime, they share the results via a new single, "Crystal Ball." The crystal ball in question seems to be a greater analogy for hoping that you'd seen heartache coming, and knowing you never truly can. Pair that with some sweet synth sounds, like a more raucous sounding version of The National, and you won't know whether to weep openly or dance your feelings out (the answer's actually both.) If this is what a newly aligned Paper Foxes can deliver, our crystal ball says the future is looking extra bright.

Mega Ran is no stranger to collaborative projects, especially those with a loosely based theme or concept (often involving video games and/or wrestling). Maverick Hunters sees the local MC checking every box as he links up with "otaku" rapper Noveliss for an album celebrating the entire Mega Man video game series. The eight-track LP has plenty of great tracks, including "Dear Summer," which involves "stories of our changing world," or the rasslin' homage "Clash Of The Titans." But the clear standout is "Bubblegum Crisis," which manages to blend nerdy references, wordplay galore, and earnest lyricism over a hypnotic beat courtesy of producer DJ DN. Whichever way your nerd flag flies, consider this a true summer anthem.

When it comes to punk, The Posters take a direct approach. Since forming in 2019, they've perfected a style they describe as "loud and fast," drawing from skate punk and hardcore of the '80s and '90s. That basic blend has proven rather effective, and they've opened for such punk legends as Agent Orange as well as local acts The Dead Beat Hymns and Corky's Leather Jacket. With the band's latest, Ambush!, they continue to distill the essence of punk, resulting in nine rollicking and riotous tracks tailored for your next (as appropriate) slam dance session. Case in point: "This Is It," a lo-fi gem of snarling angst that is both timeless punk rock and a mighty fist raised to the future. The Posters are proof that keeping it simple doesn't mean keeping it safe or boring.

Rochester, New York native Ryan Flynn is an odd duck for sure. He describes his musical efforts as a "perpetual orb-praising space pop venture," and since relocating to Arizona in 2021, he's spent his time "exploring the deserts of space and time and continuously finding new inspiration for music and visual releases." But with songs like "Automatic Love," you'd be quick to dismiss any, um, eccentricities. Just look past the slightly creepy video that involves a dirty basement and property damage; the song itself is an off-kilter synth-pop jam that turns breathy vocals and uneven instrumentation into something genuinely endearing. If it takes being a little silly and nonsensical to happen, then Flynn's dynamic pop stylings are worth the weirdness.

Phoenix garage-punk outfit The Rebel Set would have you believe their latest album, Modern Living, is the perfect summer soundtrack. But forget connotations of a day at the lake, or even a summer get-together around the grill; it's best suited for a summer in our current reality. Case in point: "Going Out In Style," the first single of the 12-track LP. This hodgepodge of peppy surf rock, frills-free new wave, and shimmery '60s pop belies the sense of abandon or outright nihilism sitting at the song's core. But even if this song is all about blasting out of this world on your own terms, it makes a deeply catchy case for such decision-making. Really, that air of "when the going gets weird, the weird get going" feels like the best-case scenario for Planet Earth in 2021.

Keep Phoenix New Times Free... Since we started Phoenix New Times, it has been defined as the free, independent voice of Phoenix, and we would like to keep it that way. Offering our readers free access to incisive coverage of local news, food and culture. Producing stories on everything from political scandals to the hottest new bands, with gutsy reporting, stylish writing, and staffers who've won everything from the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi feature-writing award to the Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. But with local journalism's existence under siege and advertising revenue setbacks having a larger impact, it is important now more than ever for us to rally support behind funding our local journalism. You can help by participating in our "I Support" membership program, allowing us to keep covering Phoenix with no paywalls.

Chris Coplan has been a professional writer since the 2010s, having started his professional career at Consequence of Sound. Since then, he's also been published with TIME, Complex, and other outlets. He lives in Central Phoenix with his fiancee, a dumb but lovable dog, and two bossy cats.

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The Five Best Songs From Phoenix Musicians in May 2021 - Phoenix New Times

The monetization and other advantages of the Digital Switchover (DSO) remain the most compelling narrative of this convoluting story. The entertainment sector will open up with foaming opportunities. The league of talents available in the sector will suddenly sponge up the opportunities whether in the movies, music, comedy, live theatre shows, technical and every aspect of the entertainment sector, will suddenly become some kind of attractive pie that every entertainer with a little gift, will scramble to have a piece of. And all of us writers will have more stories to write, build up a dome of adjectives to decorate an industry that continues to search for its best days.

This is the one story the Minister of Information and Culture, Alhaji Lai Mohammed, loves to tell. I cede that to him with all respect. And when he tells the story, he waxes lyrical like Unoka in Things Fall Apart, seducing listeners with his flute, and perhaps those hearing the good news from the Minister will jostle for positions of advantage to reap from an opportunity unfolding piecemeal. The nation is bleeding for good stories. Every little strand is important to drop in the mix.

In spite of some spice of nihilism in a seemingly obliterating situation, I love good news and try to go overboard in search of some crumbs to sweeten our situation. This is why I am contributing this material with the prayers that it be considered dispassionately even by those who grumble that the Simply Tech Column haunts them unjustifiably.

And there is no need to feel that way. The DSO process is a very big thing, bigger than personal convenience and predilections, and Nigeria, with the exaggerated claim of being the biggest economy in Africa, is far behind in execution. This is very painful and only a few people will understand why. While we talk of the business benefits of the DSO, some people fail to actually reason that one of the most important components of the DSO is the social inclusion in the value chain which unfolds into benefits for the ordinary TV viewer.

This is why the NTA, for me, presented a rare piece of good news last week, when it reported the meeting between the lower house of the National Assembly House of Representatives and the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) to discuss ways of ensuring that the DSO process runs smoothly and also provide benefits for the ordinary Nigerian. It was a smart and needed move by the House and efforts should be channeled into such meetings to prevent the process from atrophying.

Hon. Odebunmi Segun, Chairman, House Committee on Information and National Orientation, in the report monitored by this writer, was very concerned about government expenditure in the DSO and how such expenditures were being managed to profit the ordinary Nigerian out there. Government, he informed, has subsidized 908, 000 Set Top Boxes to be given out free. How far have we gone about it and how many have been activated? he asked.

For a simple recall, DSO means Digital Switchover from analogue broadcasting to digital broadcasting. Although some countries have since concluded the process, Nigeria is only now struggling along. A cardinal feature of the process is that when concluded some television sets will be unable to access TV programming, thus making the Set Top Box, which will help convert these signals, mandatorily indispensable.

In the United States, Government gave out two coupons of $40 each to each TV home. The South African government is giving out free Set Top Boxes through the SABC. Important notice. If you see this message, the station says, go to your nearest Post Office to register for a free government subsidized decoder..to continue receiving a television broadcast.

It thus become very expedient to give considerate concern to the position of the ordinary Nigerian in the DSO value chain. This is the fellow who earns the minimum wage of N30, 000, the fellow for whom there is little respite because even that amount, now less than $65, is not being paid by the state governor who justifies this aggravating wrench with dwindling revenue from Abuja.

A Set Top Box which some nations, including South Africa, are giving out free, costs N10, 000 at the moment. A state government which acquires 10, 000 Set Top Boxes will have to shell out N1bn. This is a lot of money especially in the face of the economic tailspin facing the nation, and this Math staggered me last week into thinking that the DSO was heading for the rocks if some ingenuity was not introduced into the process. The ordinary folk cannot afford it and the government may not want to be involved, pleading a worsening economic reality.

But here is my appeal. An attractive spinoff of the DSO is the Digital Dividends which will cede the broadcast frequencies given up by broadcasters to the telecommunications industry. When former DG of the NBC, Mr Emeka Mba, tested the waters, one of such frequencies was ingeniously sold to MTN for about N34bn. There are two left, this writer was reliably informed. Even when I am the first to admit that the worsening security situation in the country will likely attenuate the value of the remaining two, there may still be the compelling need to put them up for sale. While such monies would necessarily go to the Federation Account, it is my appeal that a significant percentage be given to the NBC as seed fund to acquire Set Top Boxes for some TV homes across the country.

While one was pained by the insipid participation of the Lagos State Government in the DSO launch in Lagos recently, my prayer is that as the exercise berths in Kano, the State Government and the Local Councils should be fully mobilized to be part of the process, and explore the possibility of funding some Boxes for those who cant afford them economically. In addition, businesses, as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR), should fund some Boxes while wealthy individuals should give some kind considerations to the ordinary Nigerians by funding their little window to the world.

This is what I think. The DSO process is far from being foolproof. There are too many contradictions and checkpoints that can abort the process any time, too much of dredges that wont be healthy to wash up. But the process should be niftily managed for the sake of the people. Some of us will also need to manage our badly concealed interests, expectations and plain but irritating meddlesomeness. The ordinary Nigerian needs a little space. You cant take food from his table and also take his television. That will be wicked.

Okoh Aihe writes from Abuja

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For DSO, a little consideration for the ordinary Nigerian - TheCable

It was April 2019. I was seven months pregnant and in Topshop, looking for something large in which to rehome my body.

I was wearing a maternity dress that, if you had seen me pregnant, you would have recognised a cheap, pleated wraparound in a red floral print that expanded as I expanded. I imagined Issey Miyake, but increasingly looked more like an armchair. It had served me well, but I was determined to buy something, anything, to see me through the next few months.

I had been inside for 20 minutes, moving slowly between the rails like an icebreaker, when I started to feel breathless, then nauseous. Neither was unusual in my pregnancy, so I left the shop looking for a bench. There was no need once outside, I suddenly felt calm. I realised it wasnt the baby making me sick. It was the stuff the rows and rows of stuff.

I couldnt quite explain what had happened until I read Mark OConnells 2020 book, Notes From an Apocalypse. In it, OConnell described a similar experience at a branch of Yo! Sushi, as he watched a conveyor belt go round and round: I thought about the volume of animal and human flesh required to keep the system going, he wrote. Suddenly, he, too, became breathless, experiencing a kind of abstract terror at the delirium of commerce.

While it was sushi that did for OConnell, it was mass-produced dresses that did for me. Everything is commodified and nothing is sustainable. This truth overwhelmed me. Two years later, that cheap red dress is one of the last new things I own. The only clothes I buy are secondhand.

The operative word here is new, because what happened in Topshop wasnt so much a Damascene moment as a corrective to something already in motion. I really love clothes, but I have always tended to buy used ones. As a student in Leeds, it was fashionable to dress as if in the past, so I bought my frayed Levis 501s in vintage shops. In my first job in journalism, in 2007, I was earning minimum wage, so I went to charity shops out of necessity. When I started earning a bit more, I upgraded to vintage from Beyond Retro, because the jeans had the high waists I so desired.

Occasionally, I felt the siren call of the high street or, when I entered fashion journalism in 2013, sample sales. But, in the end, I always return to eBay or, lately, the fashion resale site Vestiaire Collective. I dont look for vintage, an amorphous term that usually means it costs more, and I am unsure about the marketing terms resale and preloved, which feel loaded. I prefer the term used, because that is what they are. And, generally speaking, used clothes, even designer ones, are good value old Chlo lasts longer than new Zara and costs roughly the same.

It helped to create a plan that was clear, but not so drastic that I would immediately give up I could buy new underwear, or trainers for sport, but nothing else. If I really wanted a new dress, it had to be old. The key, I realised, was to value appetite over principle, to go with the carrot, not the stick. If I cracked which I did, twice I would simply move on.

It helped, also, that I had a baby. I didnt gain much weight, but my belly became a souffle and the idea of buying in-between clothes returnitywear, if you will bummed me out. Plus, few things prevent you from wafting around shops like having a toddler. It goes without saying that my son wears only old clothes or hand-me-downs.

Lockdown has helped, too. Over the past six months, I have had more time to look at what I already own, to get trousers re-hemmed, or just iron stuff so that it looks better. I conduct inventories, weighing up what I need (trousers, thermal vests) and what I dont (everything else). I try to operate a one-in-one-out policy, donate to clothes banks or sell things on eBay.

It also helps to not look. Over Christmas, I wanted a yellow beret I had seen in a shop window. I have a navy beret, but this was yellow. I thought about it a lot. Then, suddenly, I didnt and now it is summer. Once you look past the want and are honest about the need, desire dries up pretty fast. Capitalism is for children, says the author and psychotherapist Adam Phillips, in the sense that it preys upon how our desires are easily exploited. If people are not given time to find out what they want, they tend to grab things.

If I do land on something appealing (usually algorithmically on Instagram), I simply note the designer and look on eBay. I find that this has the useful effect of either sharpening or dulling that desire. There is a thrill in the hunt. You have to really want something to bid on it for days on end. Not everyone has the time to do this I do it while cooking, waiting for the kettle to boil, sitting on the bus but often I lose interest, which decides for me.

The fashion industry is one of the worlds great polluters. Initially, buying used clothes was a financial imperative, but working in fashion gave me a heightened awareness of the carbon, water and waste footprints of clothes production, as well as the working and living conditions of many of the people who make the clothes. It has become a difficult square to circle. At some point, resisting consumerism becomes the only ethical choice.

This situation is not confined to fashion. It defines our economic system. With its supply chains, developing-world factories and ceaseless creation of trends, fashion is at the sharp end of 21st-century capitalism, but it is not an outlier.

Some clothing companies have begun to modify their practices. Sustainability has shifted from buzzword to normality. This is commendable, but at times it can feel like a loophole new stuff is still new stuff, no matter how sustainably you dress it up. On average, 40% of the clothes in European wardrobes are not worn.

It probably sounds unusual that someone who until recently had spent seven years as a fashion editor would give up new clothes, like a pusher renouncing drugs. In some ways, it is about separating church from state I write about what people are wearing and why, rather than what they should. Fashions role is to reflect the world and provide visual cues about someones identity. Fashion should be fun, a form of self-expression, while clothes can reveal cultural trends, even sociopolitical ones. That is why we care about Trumps Maga hat, or Billie Eilish in a corset in Vogue. Even if you dont have an interest in what you wear, you are communicating as much.

The photographer Kate Friend is one of the best-dressed people I know, yet owns very little. I dont like a lot of stuff in any aspect of life, she says. Like wearing an old mink coat while condemning fur, she believes buying any clothes, new or old, is counterproductive to sustainability, because it creates desire. The greenest product is the one you dont buy. By not buying, you attempt to rewire the need for new, she says.

Friend buys two items of clothing a year and tops up underwear every six months. Last year, I got two Acne jackets, one short and shirt-like, one very long and oversized. One or both will get worn most days a week over something very basic, she says. If these items fulfilled certain criteria (I have to be sure Ill wear it weekly, if not daily, and it has to be adaptable to all sorts of situations), she will wear them until they fall apart.

Her mindset is driven by her work as a nature photographer. I like to wear uniform things that I can move around in and are easy to pack, she says. And if spending time among plants or landscapes informs what we really need, it definitely isnt a ton of clothes.

Of course, there is a difference between not buying things and not being able to. Rebecca May Johnson, an Essex-based writer and academic, has bought one thing so far this year. She spends most of her disposable income on her allotment. When she has money for clothes, she prefers to buy from Old Town in Holt, Norfolk, which makes clothes to order (not to measure), so there is no waste, and the clothes are sent to you after six weeks. They last a long time and are beautifully made. The clothes are not cheap, but they really suit how I live and feel in my body, she says.

Johnson says this is simply her choice. I do not attribute any moral value to buying or not buying things. People take their pleasure where they can in the ways they can, especially if choices are limited by income and working conditions, she says. Buying nice stuff is nice, nothing more.

I told my Topshop story to Patrick Fagan, a behavioural psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London. Were you overwhelmed by the futility and nihilism of consumerism? Id say so, he says, pointing me towards a change of thinking dating back to at least the 1960s that says that we have become consumers, rather than producers, and have less control over our lives. This, he says, has created a hole that consumerism cant fill.

There is a subconscious rule of thumb that if something is new, it must be good, and in some cases thats true, says Fagan. But its also about having autonomy buying new things feeds into that. Make something new, but familiar, and people will buy it.

There are times when I have failed. The first was when I returned to work from maternity leave during lockdown. I wasnt at home and had only a few breastfeeding T-shirts with me, so I bought a gaudy blue silk shirt, which was, on reflection, a panic-buy Zoom shirt. (I rarely wear it.) The second time was late last summer, when I was caring for my ill mother during the lockdown. Shopping was impossible, but also, because of mum, unthinkable.

On one particularly dark day, as she lay dying upstairs, I went online and bought a coat. It was oversized in navy wool, not unlike a blanket. I dont know why I bought it I imagine now it was some sort of salve but when it arrived, wrapped in crisp white paper, with me knowing my mother would be dead by the time it was cold enough to wear it, I could barely look at it. Then, and truly then, the fantasy of easy acquisition was exposed for all its emptiness.

Rather than buying new ones, I wore her clothes to the funeral (they are nice and we were the same size). This is quite common, says Fagan: When people are faced with mortality, they want to hold on to nostalgic things with meaning. By wearing her clothes, I felt connected to her.

Paola Locati is a fashion consultant who has worked in the industry for more than 20 years, yet she has barely bought anything new in five. Like me, it was a perfect storm of personal events turning 50, putting on weight, her mother dying that changed her outlook. You think: ah, Ill buy clothes in the hope of losing weight, but its a false economy, she says.

Now, Locati follows a few arbitrary rules. She buys clothes only to replace ones she has worn out. She repurposes clothes she already owns. And she tries to wear the clothes she inherited from her late mother.

I know I am still scratching a consumer itch, but, in cutting out the new, I value what I have already. As Samuel Delany wrote in his 1979 memoir Heavenly Breakfast: Its nice to have most of the people knocking around in something once beautiful, with wear grown comfortable.

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I felt nauseous in Topshop: why a fashion editor gave up buying new clothes - The Guardian

If embarking on a second year of shutdowns, social restrictions, constant health risks, and existential dread has eroded your sense of lifes ultimate meaning and purpose, a new report by philosophers in Britain and Australia may offer a double whammy of encouragement.

First, youre absolutely right, they say. Life is meaningless.

Second, this fact poses no significant problems or threats.

In fact, there are good things that might come out of it, said Tracy Llanera, research fellow at the University of Notre Dame Australia in Sydney and assistant research professor at the University of Connecticut.

I think that shift in perspective will just open a lot more philosophical and practical possibilities for people.

Llanera co-authored the 70-page study, entitled A Defence of Nihilism, with the British philosopher James Tartaglia, a professor at Keele University. His earlier books include Philosophy in a Meaningless Life.

Im passionate about nihilism, said Tartaglia. Its so badly misunderstood.

Nihilist viewpoints begin with a refusal to believe that human life draws meaning from a greater context, such as the will or purpose of a divine being, or another external force such as fate or moral goodness, or any measure of the worth and quality of human life. In some interpretations, a purely nihilistic outlook disdains any attempt to attribute value or meaning to anything at all.

Such views traditionally receive bad press and blunt condemnation from thought leaders across the world. During the pandemic, critics on the political left and right have targeted nihilism as a root cause for what they perceive as widespread cultural and moral malaise.

Writing in Politico in April 2021, Charles Sykes accused the U.S. Republican Party of abandoning its principles in favour of a free-floating nihilism. He was objecting to what he perceived as the partys attempt to gain power without consideration for moral, economic or democratic justifications or traditions.

Two of Pakistans most senior medical experts, Saira Afzal and Khalid Masud Gonal, have accused countries of medical nihilism for failing to take seriously the threat of COVID-19.

In their view, an apparent willingness by some governments to let the virus spreadand even to encourage behaviours known to result in more deathsamounted to an abdication of responsibility that reminded them of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsches definition of a nihilist: someone who believes nothing in the world has a material existence or value.

And The Guardian reported this winter on the lonely repetition and growing nihilism characterizing the lives of Australias young adults after months of wildfires and pandemic-related news and restrictions. The nihilism in this case entails a sense of apathy with a loss of psychological ability to face the future and take actions aimed at achieving happiness.

Llanera told IdeashostNahlah Ayed that a constant barrage of anti-nihilist sentiment from acquaintances and the media helped prompt her to fight back on nihilisms behalf.

Defending it really makes me feel like the madman in Friedrich Nietzsches The Gay Science, said Llanera. You know, Youve come too early! Its not yet time! Dont rock the boat! But we think that its about time and thats why were making the case.

The philosophers case depends on separating the premise that life has no cosmic meaning from the many negative conclusions people tend to draw as a consequence. Tartaglia points to a common fear that a person who considers life ultimately meaningless will embark on a destructive rejection of life itself, potentially endangering others or at least falling into despair.

Thats the one major misunderstanding, Tartaglia said. The other one is that you concern yourself with trivia because you failed to see the important things in life. He often sees the latter fear expressed in relation to the time people spend online or purchasing consumer goods instead of participating in some activity deemed essential to a meaningful life by whoever is making the criticism.

The most monstrous nihilists in popular culture include Heath Ledgers portrayal of the Joker in the 2008 Batman film, The Dark Knight. He ridicules moral codes and rules as groundless, and sees order itself as an illusion created in a desperate bid for an arbitrary happiness. To the movies audience, these beliefs seem tied to the Jokers penchant for chaos, crime and sociopathy.

Tartaglia said that figures such as the Joker might correctly be described as nihilists to the extent that they reject the idea of an overall meaning for their actions coming from some non-human source.

But I dont see any reason why that view would push you to go around destroying people and holding knives to their throats, said Tartaglia. Hes a particularly evil nihilist.

Historically, German philosopher and soldier Ernst Jnger blamed rampant nihilism after the First World War for his countrys descent into Nazism.

Although such associations continue to influence perceptions of those willing to call life ultimately meaningless, the merely trivial nihilist is perhaps the more common caricature now.

An especially well-known example is the squad of cartoonish German-accented antagonists to Jeff Bridges character, the Dude, in the film, The Big Lebowski. These self-announced nihilists seem to embody both major ingredients of the philosophys poor image: violence and foolishness.

Llanera finds no compelling logical connection between nihilism and antisocial behaviour or a choice to waste ones life on trivial, unrewarding obsessions.

And while a lack of ultimate sources for the meaning of ones life cannot directly justify good behaviour either, it can release people from harmful mistaken beliefs and damaging mindsets.

Llanera hears often from students that they consider themselves not religious, but spiritual, a description she finds potentially concerning.

It strikes me that people are always looking for something to hold ontotarot cards, the luck of the stars. I think [thats] being used to fight against this threat that life will become meaningless, Llanera said.

She criticizes some non-nihilist philosophers for spreading the message that the best way to respond to a sense of meaninglessness is to tap into non-human sources, such as a sacred entity or magical realm. In her view, this amounts to misdiagnosing the problem.

The problem is egotism, Llanera said, our attitudes of wanting to have an authority controlling and giving us answers, rather than being responsible for our own lives.

Despite her passion for defending nihilism, Llanera considers the central point about lifes meaninglessness to be neutral, rather than good news or bad news for humankind. She hopes that more people will simply outgrow their sense that the cosmic meaninglessness of their lives poses a threat. In her view, life does not need a larger context of meaning to add weight to a private or social sense of morality or joie de vivre.

Those things could be understood in a familiar, ordinary sense, like you need to take responsibility for your dog, you need to not cheat on your partner or you need to protest horrendous acts of genocide or ethnic cleansing. All of those things are part of the human condition, said Llanera.

They matter and they mean something to our individual lives and to human society. But this kind of meaning doesnt extend beyond our human context. And we think that those who defend the meaning of life, theyre just very uncomfortable with that idea.

The philosophers attempt to distance nihilisms core claims from the undesirable behaviours associated with the word itself has drawn protest from some colleagues in the field. The University of Edinburghs Guy Bennett-Hunter disputes that self-professed nihilists can enjoy a social meaning to their lives while also calling life itself ultimately meaningless.

Id stress that the social meanings, which James [Tartaglia] accepts, logically as well as psychologically require a transcendent context of meaning for life which he rejects, Bennett-Hunter said. He also argues that Tartaglias nihilism fails to account for the possibility that an ultimate meaning of life may not be factual in a prosaic sense, but nevertheless exist and be poetically true, as with creation myths.

Tartaglia argues that his interpretation of nihilism relates to its history and the intellectual battles surrounding claims to know a factual reality, especially in European thought.

He points out that the widespread use of the word nihilism and the phrase meaning of life originates in a single decade at the end of the 1700s, when religious certainties broke down among scholars while scientific beliefs gained power. Tartaglia sees most modern anti-nihilist fears as a continuation of the intellectual panic that ensued back then.

During that period, French religious conservatives railed against almost any form of reasoning and learning. To them, such pursuits risked a descent into nihilism as a result of extinguishing all divine mysteries. The supposedly threatening concept of nihilism often seemed inextricable from atheism or free thinking.

Today, however, Tartaglia feels he must defend nihilism from both religious and atheist world views, since the latter have tended towards replacing the divine meanings of life with another non-human equivalent, such as a worshipful attitude toward technology. Tartaglia worries that too many leaders perceive technological advance as a force that must be allowed to progress regardless of whether humans desire the consequences or not.

It could go in very bad directions, Tartaglia said. And thats why nihilism seems worthwhile.

On the positive side, Tartaglia argues that nihilistic attitudes offer a potential common ground upon which extremes of religion and secularism could meet, since it dispenses with all their competing claims to an ultimate meaning of life.

Life is the common ground, said Tartaglia. If youre a nihilist, you dont think that anything goes beyond life. If youre not a nihilist, you think theres something extra. OK, but theres still this massive common ground. Fundamentalists on one side or the anti-religionist brigade [with nihilism] we can all understand each other, right? We can all agree on life.

Tartaglias optimism in this regard might appear out of all proportion with the worlds many unending and brutal conflicts over much smaller doctrinal differences between all manner of groups, religious or otherwise. But then, a nihilist can dream.

Tom Howell is a producer forIdeason CBC Radio.

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Good news for nihilists? Life is meaningless after all, say philosophers | CBC Radio - News Nation USA

Greta Thunberg often paints the world as being in a dire position, stirring her followers into confronting the existential threat of climate change. Credit: Markus Schweizer. CC BY-SA 4.0.

Several years ago, a team of Australian researchers asked people in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia about how probable a global catastrophe in the near term might be. They found that a majority (54 percent) rated the risk of our way of life ending within the next 100 years at 50 percent or greater, and a quarter rated the risk of humans being wiped out at 50 percent or greater. Another study that focused only on climate change found that four in ten Americans think the odds that global warming will cause humans to become extinct are 50 percent or higher. A search for human extinction via Google Ngram Viewer, which combs through digitized documents in Googles collection, shows a significant leap in the terms frequency over the past 20 years.

The Australian researchers also noted that, when confronted with end-of-the-world thoughts, people tend to have one of three responses: first, they interpret the situation through the prism of religion. On this view, the threat of catastrophe is seen as part of the grand battle between Good and Evil in the universe. Second, people come to believe that the worlds future looks grim so we have to focus on looking after ourselves and those we love, or in a weaker form, we should enjoy the life we have now, and not worry about what might happen to the world in the future. And third, people latch onto the idea that we need to transform our worldview and way of life if we are to create a better future for the world. The authors referred to these fundamentalism, nihilism, and activism, respectively.

The fact is that many scholars who study existential threats agree that the probability of doom is higher today than ever before in humanitys 300,000-year history. From nuclear weapons to killer drones to designer pathogens, humanity is acquiring much more efficient methods of bringing down civilization or causing our extinction than in the past. Lord Martin Rees, a world-renowned cosmologist at the University of Cambridge, estimates that human civilization has a 50/50 chance of making it through this century intact.

Given the ominous possibility that Rees and others are right, the key question is how to talk about global catastrophic risks in ways that inspire people to become activists, rather than nudge them into fundamentalist beliefs or an attitude of defeatism.

In the book Enlightenment Now!, the psychologist Steven Pinker worries that the drumbeat of doom will ultimately backfire: Humanity has a finite budget of resources, brainpower, and anxiety. When these resources are used up, brainpower has been drained, and anxiety reaches a tipping point, the result may be a paralyzing sense that humanity is screwed. And if humanity is screwed, then why sacrifice anything to reduce potential risks? Why forgo the convenience of fossil fuels, or exhort governments to rethink their nuclear weapons policies? Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die! In other words, Pinker is afraid that people will succumb to nihilism rather than activism.

But is this warranted? Pinker notes that many leading intellectuals throughout the Atomic Age have made dire predictions that the world is about to end. For example (these are taken from Pinker):

Albert Einstein warned in 1950 that only the creation of a world government can prevent the impending self-destruction of mankind.

C.P. Snow, an English novelist and chemist, wrote in 1961 that within, at most, 10 years, some of those [nuclear] bombs are going off. I am saying this as responsibly as I can. That is the certainty.

Joseph Weizenbaum, an MIT computer scientist, declared in 1976 that I am completely certain that by the year 2000, you [students] will all be dead.

Hans Morgenthau, an influential international relations theorist, opined in 1979 that the world is moving ineluctably towards a third world wara strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it.

But the nuclear holocaust didnt happen. Were these proclamations a misguided waste of nerves that did nothing more than frighten people at the time? In fact, a survey conducted after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, later described by the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. as the most dangerous moment in human history, found that some 40 percent of adolescents experienced a great deal of anxiety about the possibility of war. Another survey that asked schoolchildren about the world in 10 years reported that more than two-thirds mentioned war, often in terms of somber helplessness. As a junior high-school student put it in the early 1980s, responding to an article on the nuclear winter hypothesis written by the cosmologist Carl Sagan, My friends are scared. Sometimes they thinkWill we wake up to see the world tomorrow?

These warnings may very well have galvanized people into action.

Perhaps the doomsday prognostications of Einstein, Snow, Weizenbaum, Morgenthau, and others were self-defeating prophecies that, by virtue of foregrounding the worst-case outcomes, led to actions that saved humanity.

Many people accused Sagan of alarmism about nuclear weapons. Even pro-disarmament colleagues, someone wrote in a 1997 obituary for Sagan, described the nuclear winter scenario that Sagan popularized in the early 1980s as the worst example of the misrepresentation of science to the public in my memory. But the fact is that former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev told former US President Ronald Reagan in 1988 that Sagans activism against nuclear weapons was a major influence on ending proliferation.

Today, young climate activists like Greta Thunberg embraced the strategy of frightening people into action. In a 2019 message in Davos, she declared:

Adults keep saying: We owe it to the young people to give them hope. But I dont want your hope. I dont want you to be hopeful. I want you to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want you to act.

So far, the strategy hasnt solved the climate crisis, but it could very well be the best approach going forward. Fear can be paralyzing, but it can also be motivating. There is no point to sugar-coating our collective plight: It is absolutely dire. We really do face a higher probability of catastrophe today than ever before in our history, if one takes seriously the estimates from Martin Rees and others. A 2008 informal survey of experts, for example, put the median probability of extinction this century at 19 percent, and of course the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock is currently set to a mere 100 seconds before midnight.

But the urgency of humanitys present situation is only half of the story.

Communicating about existential risks is a two-step process: First, the messengers need to stress that not a single problem facing humanity is hopelessly insoluble. And second, they need to point out that there are things that every person on the planet can do to make things better. We know how to solve climate change. We know what wed have to do to redirect an asteroid or comet away from Earth. We know how early detection systems can prevent a global pandemic. We even understand that in about 800 million years, the sun will become too luminous for complex lifeforms, like us, to continue residing on this planetary island. We know we will have to move.

There are solutions to each of these problems. Some may involve technological fixes, while others might require changes to our norms, attitudes, or the structure of political systems. But there is nothing inevitable about humanitys self-destruction this century or beyond. The only natural existential threat that we dont currently know how to mitigate is a supervolcanic eruption. A speculative plan from NASA scientists, for example, involves pumping high-pressure water into magma chambers to prevent a supereruption, but these scientists add that this might inadvertently trigger a catastrophe. More research, though, could very well provide an answer.

Along similar lines, we do not yet have any good solutions to what AI risk researchers call the control problem, that is, the puzzle of how to effectively control an algorithm whose general intelligence capabilities far exceed those of the smartest possible humans. But again, there is no reason to believe that further exploration of the problem wont reveal an effective solution. In other words, there is hope, an essential feature of activism.

Beyond this, there are plenty of ways that each of us, as individuals, can ensure a good outcome for humanity in the face of grave dangers. Obvious things include flying less, recycling, embracing a vegetarian or vegan diet, supporting movements like Fridays for Future, donating money to charities or think tanks, and even (controversially) having one fewer child. Young people might consider pursuing degrees in philosophy, public health, microbiology, computer science, or climatology to help solve the biggest challenges humanity has ever faced. Alternatively, it may be that some threats can only be solved from the top downfor instance, via government regulation. In this case, our moral obligation would be to call our government representatives and demand changeand, if that fails, to vote better politicians into office.

This is how we create activists: Tell the truth about how bad our existential predicament is, but always emphasize that the situation is far from hopeless, nor are you and I helpless. There is reason for optimismconditional optimism: If we take the risks seriously and act accordingly, the future could be better than ever before.

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Scared straight: How prophets of doom might save the world - Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

The Republican party has transformed projection from a psychological phenomenon into a political strategy. In a clinical setting, projectionaccusing others of ones own flawsis an uncontrollable behavior. While that may be true of Donald Trump (Lord knows he presents as a compelling case for psychoanalysis), it is not true for his loyal minions. For them it is a conscious effort to stuff reality down the memory hole.

Three women have exposed the viciousness and nihilism guarding the official Republican version of history by daring to contradict it. The abuse that Rep. Liz Cheney, Susan Hennessey, and Natasha Bertrand have suffered says more about the Republican party than it does about them.

What could generate such animus?

Though there is more than a hint of misogyny in the assaults on the integrity of the three women, the graver problem for the Republican party is the intellectual threat they pose in reminding people of the truth.

Cheney had the temerity to refuse to forgive or forget the January 6 insurrection. In addition to being ousted from her leadership role in the party, she has been criticized for everything from her politics to her decision to politely greet President Biden during the State of the Union address. One of her colleagues, in display of the sort of juvenile trolling increasingly common among Republicans, tweeted a childish hey, hey goodbye at her after she lost her position.

The events of January 6 are sufficiently recent that the effort to erase the memory of them is still ongoing. Some Republican members of the House are trying to recharacterize the riot as a normal tourist visit and condemned the FBIs investigation of the insurrection as the harassing peaceful patriots. Likewise, Sen. Ron Johnson has claimed that the assault was by and large a peaceful protest, which is true in the same sense that Fords Theatre on April 14, 1865 was by and large free of assassinations.

Cheneys refusal to let this destruction of history stand unchallenged is what they fear. Projection is a strategy born of weakness and the recognition that there is no defense for the Republican partys actions. By refusing to be deterred, she exposes the Republican party to scrutiny for inciting and defending the insurrection.

Similarly, there is no defense for former Attorney General William Barrs shameful actions while in office, so projection is the only option. Hence the absurd charges that Hennessey, who recently left the Lawfare blog (where I am a contributor) and joined the National Security Division at the Department of Justice as a special counsel, will politicize the Department of Justice. The rightwing commentariat went ballistic at her appointment, claiming that her work on Russiagate and the history of DOJ politicized engagement reflects a political bias and would somehow make DOJ more political than it was before. Even if partisan squabbles were in her nature, given the history of how Barr bent DOJ to Trumps service, that would be a tall order.

The list of Barrs corruptions, abuses, and lies is long and sordid, including politically motivated interventions in multiple prosecutions of Trumps allies, the Lafayette Square incident, refusing to respond to congressional oversight, misleading the public aboutthe content of the Mueller report, and being an early proponent of the foreign ballot conspiracy. One recent revelation about Barrs tenure is both troubling and comical: The Washington Post reported last week that DOJ tried to protect Rep. Devin Nunes from an anonymous critical parody account by issuing a subpoena to Twitter seeking the identity of the user known as Devin Nunes Alt-Mom. (Under Attorney General Merrick Garlands leadership, DOJ withdrew the subpoena earlier this year.)

Hennesseys appointment, far from being a politicization of the Department of Justice, is a rejection of the politicization of the department during Barrs twenty-two month tenure. As a skilled lawyer and an assiduous observer of the Trump administration and its Russian connections, shes well positioned to repair the damage done to the department under Barr.

The final leg in this tripod of forgetfulness is the ongoing attempt to rewrite the history of Trumps collusion with Russia during the 2016 election by calling all of those who reported on the story or analyzed it conspiracists.

Hence the case of Natasha Bertrand, a reporter for CNN. Shes been prolific in reporting on Trumps connections to Russia. For her efforts, as recounted in Washington Monthly, she was sued by Kash Patel, a Trump/Nunes acolyte, for defamation. The case has little if any factual basis, to say nothing of its lack of legal merit. More recently, Glenn Greenwald called her a deranged conspiracy theorist and scandal-plagued CIA propagandist.

This assault is a classic case of misdirection. Both Bertrand and Hennessey were, it is said, more credulous of the allegations of the Steele dossier than the document warranted. In hindsight, maybe so. But their analysis of one document doesnt disqualify the validity of their observations of the myriad Trump-Russia connections, nor absolve Trump and his enablers of one of the most grievous acts of unpatriotism of the twenty-first century.

The fact remains that the Mueller report, and, more recently, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report, described a pattern of activity that involved hundreds of steps taken by Trump, his campaign team,and his friends and confederates during the 2016 election campaign in which Trump or his associates connected themselves to or benefited from Russian actions.Never has the history of American politics seensuch an entanglement. The report describes, in painstaking detail, what happenedand the wholesale assault on Bertrand and Hennessey as conspiracy mongers is nothing less than historical revisionism. In the end, at least sixteen of Trumps campaign staff can be proven to have had Kremlin connections.

The five-volume Senate report is replete with detail, which is precisely why Republicans wont allow reality to stand. Trumps subservience to Russia, his corruption, and his attacks on constitutional democracy are political liabilities. Forgetting, distracting from, or distorting them is political necessity. And for insisting on those truths, Cheney, Bertrand, and Hennessey have become the objects of Republican ire.

As George Orwell said: The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.The objective of the Trumpians who wish to destroy democracy is exactly that: to obliterate history and, at the same time, destroy those who would remind us of it. The only way to fight themthe only step left for those of us who prize history and rationality over power and authorityis to remember that history so that it will never be repeated.

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The Republican Partys Partisanship Projection Problem - The Bulwark

God Save the Queen is the second single by British punk icons, the Sex Pistols. Shortly after its release, Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten claimed, There are not many songs written over baked beans at the breakfast table that went on to divide a nation and force a change in popular culture.

The song is undoubtedly a punk classic and one of the highlights from the original British wave. In addition to its composition, the lyrics and the furore they caused cemented the songs place in pop culture history making it one of the most punk songs of all time.

The song was released during Queen Elizabeth IIs Silver Jubilee of 1977. If by some miracle, you havent heard the song, the title God Save The Queen may seem like an uber-patriotic reaffirmation of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. However, it is not. Given Johnny Rottens take, as mentioned earlier on the songs polarising nature, it is clear there was more to the track than meets the ear.

Everything about it was controversial. Released on the 27th of May 1977, slap bang in the middle of the Queens 25th anniversary of her accession, the single caused widespread horror. The lyrics and the cover were seen as highly provocative at the time.

The extent of the offence caused was so deep that the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) flat out banned the song. The Independent Broadcasting Authority refused to play the song, and ubiquitous chain Woolworths refused to stock the single. The BBC called it an example of gross bad taste. This furore played into the band and their manager, Malcolm McClarens hands. Between late May and early June, they were shifting 150,000 units a day.

The songs original title was No Future, as the lyrics display a general malaise towards the British monarchy and a general anti-authoritarian stance. In 2017 Rotten said To me, the lyrics themselves were a fun thing. It was expressing my point of view on the monarchy in general and on anybody that begs your obligation with no thought. Thats unacceptable to me. You have to earn the right to call on my friendship and my loyalty. And you have to have value-proven points in order for me to support you. Thats how it is.

The songs title also caused great offence as it took its name directly from the UKs national anthem. This, in tandem with it being the Queens Jubilee, and the lyrics were too much for many sections of the Mustard clad, red-trousered, stuffy British public to take. The lyrics equate dear Queenie to a fascist regime. They also sardonically claim, like a progenitor to David Ickes whacky theories, God Save The Queen/She aint no human being. Rottens lyrics also embodied that jaded nihilism of punk that made it such a tangible force for the youth, there is no future in Englands dreaming.

It seems as if the change of name from No Future to God Save The Queen was, in fact, a coincidence rather than a well-orchestrated business move or a piece of stringent anti-authoritarianism. Sex Pistols drummer, Paul Cook, maintained, it wasnt written specifically for the Queens Jubilee. We werent aware of it at the time. It wasnt a contrived effort to go out and shock everyone.

Johnny Rotten has also expanded on the intention behind the lyrics You dont write God Save the Queen because you hate the English race. You write a song like that because you love them, and youre fed up with them being mistreated. His purpose of evoking sympathy for the British working class seems fair enough, given the mire of the 1970s on the island. After all, Britain in the 70s was dubbed the sick man of Europe.

The song also caused much debate surrounding its chart standings. It reached number one on the NME charts in the UK and made it to number two on the Official UK Singles Chart, which the BBC used. However, given the number of units it was shifting in its first month, many people doubted that it could have been stuck in the penultimate position by chance.

The rumours that the charts had been fixed by the BBC were exacerbated by the fact the song that pipped it to the top spot was Rod Stewarts forgettable single I Dont Want to Talk About It.

More recently, Rotten has also thrown shade on the BBCs general reputation. He claimed that when the BBC banned him personally in 1978, it was for calling out Jimmy Savilles depravity in the until-recently-concealed interview with his post-Pistols band, Public Image Ltd.

The furore God Save The Queen caused has only added to the band and the songs legacy. Punk in all its essence, it remains a three-chorded staple for rebels everywhere. Its lasting impact made somewhat of an ironic turn on the 3rd of November 2016.

Andrew Rosindell, a Conservative MP, argued in a motion for a return to the broadcasting of the national anthem God Save the Queen at the end of BBC Ones daily transmissions. Rosindells call came as he wanted to commemorate the Brexit vote and Britains consequent withdrawal from the European Union. Rosindells claim drew much ire, largely because the BBC had dropped the practice in 1997 when they switched to 24-hour news broadcasting (which rendered the need for a closing song obsolete).

In a bizarre twist of fate, that same evening, BBC Twos flagship programme,Newsnight, ended their broadcast with host Kirsty Wark saying that they were incredibly happy to oblige Rosindells request. They proceeded to close with a Sex Pistols song clip much to Rosindells displeasure.

Watch the music for God Save The Queen, below.

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The controversial reasons Sex Pistols song God Save The Queen was banned by the BBC - Far Out Magazine

Remembering Fuad Sir: English teacher, funny adult, tongue-clicker extraordinaire

As a reader, consumer, and perhaps even a man of letters once upon an optimistic time, tributes, be they written or otherwise, constitute some of my least favourite types of content. Between the narcissism of the author and the nihilism of temporal annihilation, what purpose does a tribute serve but to ensure that, through the weight of tragedy or through serendipitous proximity, an individual finds his or her way into the spotlight for a brief moment in time?

These journeys through the artificially cobbled streets of a strangers lane of tediously strung-together memory -- oftentimes with an eradicated person of some import whose existence, unfortunately, has failed to earn its place next to yours -- are oftentimes little more than hyperbolic, poorly expressed, uninteresting forays into the falsity of a person that once existed.

Is there really such shame in remembering, loving, liking, enjoying the company of, praising somebody who existed imperfectly, that we must take away these flaws, instill pretenses, create statues out of clouds so that an act of remembrance in effect serves the exact opposite purpose -- to be forgotten as just another subject of a few thousand words forcefully spread to span a few hundred hours?

Can we move away from such selective memory sharing, from birthing elephants inside rooms too small to house so many?

Contrary to appearances, this is not a bitter diatribe that unnecessarily seeks out flaws in individuals who have perhaps earned the right to indulge in the harsh unrealities of manufactured memory. This is a response to finding myself in a situation similar to my predecessors: A desire to offer a few words dedicated to my subjectively important memories regarding a person who is an objectively unimportant stranger to most people to have ever existed.

This is an attempt to do something different.

While I wish to make no claims towards the quality of writing I now present you with, the activity itself is something that I enjoy and feel comfortable doing. Such instances occur less frequently in these times of millennial misery, time shortages, and overly indulgent digital dalliances, but hardly ever as a 16-year-old student of O Levels and future failure at committing to less than three letter grades.

But, thanks to fragile alliances formed by soft fathers in hardened corporations, thanks to inevitable friendships formed in Lalmatia and unlikely ones formed above a Dhanmondi bicycle store, thanks to the forces of the universe blowing woefully unprepared dad-son duos across the subcontinent and back, I found myself awkwardly sitting in a room filled with adolescent teenagers, doodling endlessly in my notebook.

This was the class of Abdullah Al-Fuad, father of friend, sporadic attention giver, also teacher of O Level English. My memory, notorious for not existing most of the time, does not recall detail with much accuracy, or at all. But I can remember so many moments of shared laughter, specificities now long forgotten, not with him, but the people who surrounded him. From the way he clicked his tongue to the unaffordable price of his attention, leaving you dumbfounded with his answer to a reasonable question you were unlucky enough to have asked, to the random Turkish swear words he would slip into conversations with unsuspecting students, he was just incredibly fun and funny to be around.

Three decades into a life dissipating its worth, I understand the value of laughter: I have all the patience for people who have shown moments of exceptional cruelty, whose sins have delved into the societally unacceptable and the justifiably illegal, who have dumbfounded me with their ability to be self-serving with such unwavering consistency, but none whatsoever for unfunny individuals with hollowed out senses of humour.

That room was also where I discovered that this was something I enjoyed. I dont know which aspects of Fuad Sirs knowledge pool I was fortunate enough to have inherited, but I do know that the room served as an endless well of opportunity for me to sweat out the frustrated, imitational words of a lovesick teenager. And then, later, more practically, the provider of my first salary as an individual qualified enough to scrutinize the English language skills of others.

But, before that, I read at home. I wrote in Fuad Sirs class. Sometimes we exchanged words. I read at home. And I attempted to write like the writers I read. I think I received some feedback or the other in between but I remember nothing. I read at home. I wrote in Fuad Sirs class. I began with simple sentences. Like that one.

And now its 15 years later and I do not know if the dependent clauses which constantly shove their way into my sentences are welcome details or burdensome annoyances, whether this is a skill to take pride in or a habit to be eliminated.

Between the nostalgic act of recalling those times-when-we-understood-so-little to the living of these times-where-we-understand-too-much, we have gained and lost the people we choose to act as supporting characters in the forgettable movie of our lives. Fuad Sir, along with the people who surrounded him, was part of a similar process, not for some unfortunate, avoidable, and regretful decision on anyones part, but merely due to frosty way leading on to frosty way.

But all of this is just a complex, time-consuming, and convoluted path towards expressing a simple sentiment: Fuad Sir was an undeniable catalyst in my life. I had at 16 what most people spend their entire lives missing: Knowledge of exactly what I was meant to do.

I dont know why I choose to waste this knowledge with such consistency of spirit, and I dont know why I began nor where we have ended up, nor do I know what my intention was as I began. And I definitely dont know if youll remember Abdullah Al-Fuad, teacher of English, funny adult, and tongue-clicker extraordinaire, but I do know that our memories only exist in the living and that our incessant need to create statues of ourselves will only lead to a half-broken visage in an antique desert.

I believe I was lucky to have my life visited by Fuad Sir and to have later visited his life and that of his family. Maybe I will visit again. But if you have found any value in my visit into your life today, unannounced and unearned as it may have been, then you too have been visited by the spirit of Fuad Sir. And that realization is the closest to immortality we ever get.

SN Rasul is an Editorial Assistant at the Dhaka Tribune and a Lecturer of English at North South University.

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OP-ED: Between a simple sentence and an essay of uncontrollable complexity - Dhaka Tribune

Walking through downtown Portland, Oregon, in December 2019, I noticed a lot of empty storefronts. Id until recently lived in the city, and while one gets accustomed to businesses aging out of popularity (furrier, anyone?), about one-fifth of businesses Id seen open earlier in the year were now gone. Maybe landlords had gotten greedy? Or maybe Portland, which a decade earlier had been considered a youth magnet city, had lost its appeal.

Two months later, COVID-19 started to burn through the country. With the first cases next door in Washington state, Oregon locked down swiftly, a move that proponents believe kept the states infection and death rates low (192,000 and fewer than 2,600 respectively), if at an economic cost, especially to Portlands downtown: On top of 80-plus already unoccupied spaces, 190 closed temporarily or permanently.

Then George Floyd was murdered. While as many as 10,000 Portlanders marched in support of Black Lives Matter, a small portion50 on some nights, 600 on othersdecided the way to address Floyds death, to assuage something they felt was killing the American soul, was through destruction. These protesterssome self-identify as Antifa or black bloc, others call them rioters or anarchistsset fires, broke windows, and mixed it up with whatever authority figures they saw as standing in their way that day. Some Portlanders viewed these actions as justified, others considered them smashing for the sake of smashing.

Its just people breaking things, a commercial realtor told me. Theyre just criminals. With office towers emptied because of the pandemic, and storefronts busted up indiscriminately, downtown became both barren and unpleasant. With so little in operation, locals stayed away. So did tourists. The homeless population burgeoned. Crime shot up, including rampages that kept Portlanders wondering whether the next incident would be on their block, their business strip, their Boys & Girls Club.

To stay or abandon Portland? Its a real question, for those considering whether to spend their creative and financial capital in the Rose City. Almost every night since May 27, 2020, some area of the city has succumbed to violence. Much of it is centered downtown, at the federal courthouse and police station, but also at local landmarks like Powells Books, the Benson Hotel (where nearly every U.S. president since Taft has stayed), and the Oregon Historical Society (vandalized in October and again in April). The presence of plywood facing covering up storefronts along Broadway, where the citys main department stores and entertainment venues are located, now moves into its second year. This has not gone unnoticed by the outside world, and if I had a nickel for every person who in the past two months has asked whether Portland is a good place for a family vacation, Id be clocking about a buck twenty.

With the citys restaurants reopened for indoor dining on May 7, and the regions notoriously dreary winter weather giving way to the fecundities of spring, the city might reasonably expect to latch back onto the 126 months of economic expansion it had seen in January 2020.

It all comes down to confidence, right? Confidence in the citys ability to secure the basic services that make commerce possible, said Andrew Hoan, CEO of the Portland Business Alliance. Intel just announced there will be more factories here in the Portland region. So I think the question: do we still have economic swagger? The answer is yes.

Thats one way to look at it.

Personally, I am so happy to be out of that shithole, said Ron Avni, who, after operating a half-dozen successful Portland restaurants, divested from a city he saw as putting the welfare of protesters ahead of the needs of small business. The nihilists of Portland are always looking for excuses to ruin the productive segment. And the city does nothing to stop them.

Avni told me this in January, the day after his former restaurant Shalom YAll, which featured the foods of his native Israel and is currently under remodel, had its outdoor furniture trashed and the words Free Palestine, scum and murder spray-painted on its face.

The irony is one of the partners in the business is Palestinian, Avni said, from his new home in Austin. It doesnt matter. They come for you anyway.

Avnis fatalism is not unfounded, nor is the concern that Portland does not do enough to stop the destruction. When the violence started last summer, the Portland City Council demanded a $50 million cut to the $241 million police budget. (They got more than $15 million.) Did Portland mayor Ted Wheeler like that the citys main police station was being attacked every night? No, but he (and the vast majority of Portlanders) liked Trump even less and thus, when the Trump administration sent federal troops to Portland to protect federal property, the grudge match played out in the media, with Wheeler telling Trump to, Stay the hell out of the way, and Trump calling Wheeler, a fool.

What this meant in practical terms was a new district attorney who declined to prosecute more than 900 of 1,000 people arrested in the act of protesting in the second half of 2020, including many who committed property crimes. And so the violence not only continued, it grew more brazen; when protesters marched to Wheelers downtown condominium and demanded he resign, he chose to move rather than confront them. Only after Trump was voted out of office did Wheeler take a tougher stand on the continuing violence, asking citizens to help unmask the perpetrators. That request earned him the enmity of those sympathetic to the protesters and left an administration all but defenestrated.

We have a mayor that is hated by the right and has now become a favorite punching bag of the left, said Matt Kaye, who with his wife owns two Japanese restaurants on the citys east side. Portland has a proud history of political and social activism, but when it comes to the bevy of issues and the well-being of the business community, we are a city of handwringers, long-sighers, and eye-rollers.

I asked Kaye (who, full disclosure, took over a space of a business my husband sold in 2020) what made him decide to open a second location during both the height of the pandemic and the protest violence. We made the decision to expand before the shitstorm rained down on us, he said. We could have closed, or paused, but we were afraid of losing relevance.

Kayes locations are two miles from downtown, but both butt up against other areas that have seen considerable unrest, including a police station a mile away thats been attacked more than a dozen times. Even closer is Portlands Red House, site of a quasi-autonomous zone earlier this year. While the protest was ostensibly undertaken as a stand against gentrification and in support of a black and Native American family whod lived in the home for six decades (if more basically about a house that had been foreclosed on for nonpayment), the area became befouled with trash and human waste and, to the distress of neighbors, some occupiers open-carried rifles.

Our employees and loyal neighborhood customers buoyed our spirits, but it was really a tough, long haul thats not over yet, said Kaye, who, unlike Avni, has felt supported by the city. Theres grant money to be found and the street-side dining program has been very effectively administered, he said. Im optimistic about the long-term future of Portland businesses.

I havent heard many people leaving, said Vanessa Sturgeon, president of a commercial real estate company in downtown Portland. To be perfectly honest, the media in general has really overblown the Portland story. You have people calling from all over the country saying, Is it safe? Downtown is perfectly safe during the day.

Sturgeon does not deny its been a rough go. Its undoubted that business has taken a hit, she said. The retail tenants often have to leave their boards up because they dont have insurance for [the windows] anymore. When theyve gone to renew, theyre unable to procure insurance without a civil unrest clause. Almost every business thats getting hit by these rioters, its coming out of pocket, and most of them are small businesses.

With COVID on the wane and people getting vaccinated, downtown is starting to look less ghostly. From what I hear from restaurant ownersbecause downtown is a very good restaurant market when theres tourismis that its active, said Sturgeon. People can at least see the finish line here.

I do not doubt that Portland will regenerate. The people who came to the city in the aughts brought a love for making things by hand, things visitors also loved, whiskey and coffee and snowboards and bikes. The annual waterfront blues festival can draw more than 120,000 people. Wine country is thirty minutes away. Yet for the city to recover some or all of the $5.6 billion visitors spent in the metro area in 2019, it may need to project something of this image to the world, or some other image than the one currently being transmitted. A friend who visits Portland twice a year recently told me shell skip it this summer.

Last summer I was devastated to see the decline, she wrote. I was wondering if Portland even factored in the loss of tourist dollars when they allowed the chaos?

Am I optimistic or pessimistic about the city? Hmm on the pessimistic side, said Sally Krantz, co-owner of a CBD-infused beverage company. The trash situation is out of control. I know its partly because of the pandemic, but there are now rats everywhere. And Ted Wheeler is an ineffective dope. Everything from the riots to the amount of garbage and the fact that the homeless have taken over the city frankly reminds me of when I lived in [New York mayor] Ed Kochs Manhattan. I would have voted Wheeler out, but the alternative? A woman whose career was in food service and wore a Mao/Stalin/Che skirt to a campaign rally?

While Krantz said her business has not been affected by the protestors, her life has been.

I live only a couple of blocks from the Red House, which was a nightmare, she said. The amount of havoc generated by them, the buses had to divert because they had barricaded [the area], the businesses forced to shut because people couldnt physically get to them and then when they could, found them vandalized. And for what? For a family that didnt pay their mortgage. Life in Portland seems to be a constant battle between people unwilling to see reality and want to live like Ken Kesey on the magic bus, and those of us who understand that you have to pay your mortgage and get your kids to school.

From covering the protests all summer and fall, I know that the people doing damage to the city are little more than kids themselves. The argument that they are a tiny minority of the population is true. Still, a few hundred people a night busting things up beams a message that the city is okay with this, even if its not. I dont know how long it takes for perception to become reality, to, maybe, become its own form of attraction; a signal to people who appreciate the continuing chaos. And if the acts of violence are both ongoing and indiscriminate, if the enemy can be Trump or Wheeler or the police or an Israeli restaurant, then how do citizens regain a sense of equilibrium and security, and when?

Thats a complicated question, about a sense of security, said Portland Business Alliances Andrew Hoan. The first thing that we would look at is, what are the job impacts? What are the consequences to real estate? Have we reversed the economic and demographic trends that have benefited this region for a decade? If you went backwards in time to February of 2020, Portland, Oregon had ascended the economic ladder in every single category.

Hoan ticks off some hopeful metrics as of February 2020: Wed seen enormous increase in median household income, in the regional population, in the diversification of the job market. We had seen construction trends, both in commercial and residential, on par with places like New York City in terms of the number of cranes that were dotting our skyline. And so COVID hits. You add on historic wildfires, [you add] political violence, and you would naturally assume that those trends have been reversed. And at least as of January, when we conducted a massive economic analysis of the impacts over the past year, it has not. We continue to see massive inflow. If anyone questions the resilience of this region, then they gotta sit down and check their pulse.

Maybe. Maybe the people sticking with or moving to Portland dont mind unpredictability. Maybe they think its a phase. Maybe being a youth magnet city inevitably means drawing the equivalent of rowdy teenagers, maybe theyll grow out of it.

The reasons we all moved hereand chose not to move somewhere else in the last 15 monthsare all still here, said restaurateur Matt Kaye. We all want to go to our favorite shop or restaurant downtown, though sadly, many of them are no longer, see a concert at the Schnitzer or at the waterfront. I think, I hope [our] collective wills and desires, combined with more functional governance, will contribute to the return of a healthy business community. But short-term? We have a mess on our hands.

Nancy Rommelmannis an author and journalist based in New York. Follow on Twitter@nancyromm

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Can Portland Recover From a Year of Lockdowns and Nihilism? - The Dispatch