film studies

Second Coming of (Distributed) Christ (Consciousness). Alex Zhu on Wednesday 2/4 at 11:30 AM CT

A math and compsci guy tries to integrate mysticism and spirituality into a rigorous epistemic and a rational worldview.

knives out wake up dead man good spiritual film. Recently, I saw knives out wake up dead man on Netflix and was surprised at how poignant and special some of the scenes with the earnest priest were.

In many ways, it kind of reminds me of how this Uptrusting platform is trying to be.

In one scene, the earnest priest and the atheist detective are talking about the Catholic Church. A bit of a tense scene as I was watching with a devout Catholic with me as the detective named all the ills and lies of the church.

But at the end, the priest responds, "it's true these are all just likely stories and make believe pageantry. But the real question is whether these stories lead to a beautiful truth or a terrible lie?

It reminds me of Ernest Becker's Denial of Death where he takes an existential view that everything humans do from ambitious projects to having kids are attempts to avoid the vital lie of our mortality.

I asked at a Becker conference, is there any way out of this trap of whatever I do being based on a lie to avoid the truth of my mortality?

One scholar responded, I suppose it depends whether the vital lie is delusional or illuminating. Does it bring out truth or is it covering it over?

Anyway, strong recommend to the film. The detective who-done-it was also spectacular.

Cozy Mysteries.  

For comfort reading at the moment I'm going through the Agatha Christie Poirot novels in order. They're a blast, I highly recommend. I also recently watched the third Knives Out movie, "Wake Up Dead Man". The Knives Out movies are cozy mysteries, heavily influenced by Christie in general, and the character of Poirot specifically, but with a layer of intentional cultural commentary that's mostly missing from Christie. I loved the first movie, hated the second one, and loved the third one. If you dropped off after the second one, give it a chance, it's a surprising, delightful return to form.

In that movie, they mention the book "The Hollow Man" aka "Three Coffins", a celebrated novel by the master of the "locked room" mystery, John Dickson Carr. I've read one other Carr novel that I remember being clever, but not much else.

It's interesting to feel the difference in style and tone between Christie and Carr, who were writing in the same genre at the same time and surely read each other. Carr is much more dramatic, theatrical, exciting, much more interested in suspense, peaks and valleys, spectacle, things like that. But as a result, it's sometimes hard to understand what's happening. Like, you will be told that a character spoke, but you won't be told what they said, and instead it will explore the reactions and implications, and then maybe go somewhere else completely, before returning in a later chapter to reveal what was actually said. But that whole time, you're wondering, wait, did I miss something? Was I supposed to understand this?

Christie, on the other hand, has this absolutely transparent prose. It's a marvel. There's nothing extra, nothing confusing, you never lose track of her for a second. It's perfectly clear. You understand everything that's happening in the story exactly when she wants you to, and you're never worried that you didn't understand anything.

Which makes the reveals at the end so satisfying. Like a magician wearing a short sleeved shirt, doing everything very slowly, right in front of your eyes.

It's also SO cozy. If you don't read murder mysteries, the idea of the "Cozy Murder Mystery" might sound like an oxymoron, and obviously like, actual murder is not cozy or fun or anything like it. But Christie's world is so calm and pleasant, and so nostalgic for me. 

This is aided by the fact her murders are also unnaturally bloodless. I just read one where someone took the knife out of the victims neck and was touching the point to see how sharp it is, with no mention of the fact that, were someone actually stabbed in the neck, the knife would be covered in blood. It's a weirdly dissociated version of violence, where the actual violent act is completely abstracted, completely symbolified.

Juries still out on the Carr book. I'll finish it, but my guess is I'll be going right back to Christie afterwards.

I came here to say something else, only tangentially related to all this, but that's enough for today. I'll have to say it another day.

P.S. In the vein of the cozy mystery, but also in the vein of short daily puzzle: I recommend Clues By Sam. It's a very high quality daily logic puzzle that seems to be actually improving my working memory.

https://cluesbysam.com/

Let me know if you try it, or if you're already playing it.

P.P.S. The difficulty ramps through the week, peaking on the weekend and resetting on Monday, so if it's too hard for you today, try again on Monday.

Ordinary Love. An invitation to true wellness culture

Postmodernity is too egocentric. This includes current “spiritual” trends.

Here’s what an alternative can look like: Yesterday Dara asked Jason to install a window A/C unit in Val’s room; he came over and did it. Last night a participant shared struggling with a contract at work, and a lawyer in the session volunteered to help her redline it. My sister watches the kids while I help my brother-in-law move their furniture to make room for the new baby. If this doesn’t sound special, that’s the point. You’re already doing this, that’s also the point.

I’m not writing to admonish us to “get rid” of the “ego”—a particular self-identity*. I think it’s too hard for modern Americans, steeped in a culture of individualism. I love life, people, experience, and I think a good life includes a sense of “me.” Instead, I want to expand the sense of self to go much beyond the concept of “my body, my history” to see the larger whole these are part of. One upshot of this is gratitude, even for what I usually think of as “Jordan’s”—like these thoughts thunk in English. I needed English to think ‘em, so how much are they ‘mine’? 

Automated & consensual narrative lock-in

We know that social media exacerbated this. Many studies show narcissism and loneliness increasing faster with mass adoption of social media, especially after 2012. Young kids don’t want to serve as a fireman or doctor anymore, they want to be adored as an influencer (We’re working on this social media problem by launching UpTrust). 

Now I worry that AI is exponentiating this self-reification trend to unprecedented levels.

Last week I met four people who were convinced that their personal ChatGPT interface, molding its “personality” to respond based on their unique interactions, was a sentient being. If you think our filter bubbles are bad now, imagine what it’s like when we have 8 billion of them? Each individual’s personal collection of bots reinforcing whatever identity feels special, safe, and comfortable, no matter how limited and delusional?

There’s nothing wrong with specialness, safety, and comfort, but neither is there anything wrong with ordinariness, risk, and discomfort. Transformation, life, intimacy, and play all demand both. Are we bleaching the color of life in pursuit of maintaining a self? What are we so afraid of that we hide from becoming? Life is transformation. Relating requires and changes our uniqueness. Other people providing friction and challenge—that’s a service, freely given to all at birth.

Perhaps the trap isn’t narcissism. It’s any reification of identity via any narrative frame, especially spiritual ones, designed to parade as if they’re narrative-free. And the cost is ordinary love.

Transcend and exclude often means we fall back into less maturity

I’m still trying to get my mind and language around this, so I’m going to highlight the contrast to see the phenomena more clearly. Does your coach / (AI) therapist / culture / practice help you:

• Express more gratitude? Become more forgiving? Be more accepting of others’ flaws? “Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court”?
  Or say you should be treated a very particular way (reifying a victim identity?)

• Build infrastructure that’s super helpful but unsexy? Do things that are good for others without recognition? Feed those who are hungry? Do mundane things for the local whole like pick up trash that’s not yours?
  Or build a marketing funnel that will help you promote yourself and perpetuate the ‘me’ ‘me’ ‘me’ cycle? 

• Love your friends and family better? Accept being misunderstood? Show up to their events and support their successes? Take care of them when they’re sick? Be more generous? Patient, humble, respectful, loyal, temperate? Maintain commitments regardless of feelings?
  Or emphasize your in-the-moment desire above all else, calling impulsivity and self-centeredness ‘surrender’?

• Develop boundaries as expressions of love and connection? Face challenges with grace and acceptance? Take responsibility for your pain, flaws, mistakes, shadows, and limitations?
  Or use "boundaries" to control others and force them to change according to your preferences?

• Admit ignorance, learn from criticism, hold your beliefs lightly, speak simply about profound experiences, work steadily without needing dramatic breakthroughs, notice your defensive patterns without performatively announcing them, contribute to social understanding, love others as they are?
  Or position yourself as having rare insights to help others transcend their limitations through your techniques and advice?

This list can go on; I wish I could speak to the connection and community side more but I’m stuck in my own bias. 

I’m not saying it’s easy, we of course need guides, mentors, feedback–it’s so complicated! Nor am I saying its special—all of this has been said for thousands of years! I’m trying to highlight a healthy version of one pole and unhealthy versions of another on purpose to get more clarity on where we are deeply unbalanced today. This is especially true of ‘spiritual’ hotbeds like San Francisco, Boulder, Ubud, Amsterdam. Austin is somewhat counterbalanced by its Texas-ness—cowboy culture still emphasizes family, duty and sacrifice to a greater good beyond ‘you’. Plus our immigrants are a little more integrated.

What’s up with me?

Anyway, I ask myself: Why do I care?

Sure, practices purported to transcend ego instead teach self-absorption. But it’s in the name— "personal growth" and “self-help.” What’s got me?

Because I’m guilty of all of this. 

Sometimes despite my best efforts, I’ve taught people to ignore their minds in order to stay with the sensations of their bodies (rather than integrating them); to ‘surrender’ to their feelings-in-the-moment and ignore larger consequences or agreements and the greater wholes that hold them. I’ve corrected a lot of these mistakes, made amends, even evolved the practice and training. Yet I still can’t quite escape the selfishness of ‘wellness’ culture. Prime example: a couple years ago we hosted a “Give Fest” at the Relateful Studio in Austin with a reverse silent auction, where people bid on what they wanted to give to a local nonprofit. Even my wife and I didn’t follow through on what we ‘won.’

Let us redefine wellness and self-development. Let us change the metrics to gratitude, forgiveness, acceptance of our and others' flaws, showing up for family, friendship, and our greater communities. Let us celebrate unglamorous, unwitnessed interdependence.

Three alternatives: what is it all for?

Burning Man is actually a great example of a positive alternative. The economy is about gifting—and after your first year, it’s well known that to get the most out of the experience, you need to give. People camp in communities, build massive art projects and cars together, and give them freely without credit, burning them at the end. It’s all about creating for the whole, being present with each other in non-transactional relating. All of this disrupts the self-reification loops in such a way that people are consistently shaken from long held encumbrances, and come out of the desert transformed. I say this as an admirer but not a fanatic—I went to Black Rock City in 2012 and 2014, and then didn’t go again.

Relatefulness

Relatefulness, especially in Level Up ⬆’s Leadership Program and the The Relateful Coaching Training, does not fall into these problem nearly as badly as almost every other community I’ve seen. We claim our directionality of truth + love. This means the personal can’t be number one—individual expression and growth is always in service of something greater. Of course we make mistakes. (For example, the Level Up structure highlighted individualism. We’ll be returning to a cohort-only model this Fall—more on that in a future email). But we’ve done a really good job focusing on being with what is, especially relationally and communally. 

We don’t abandon compassion and honesty in service of making sure people feel seen, heard, cultivating a ‘safe space,’ or maintaining instagram-defined-trauma-therapy-norms. This is hard, because I not only want people to feel seen, heard, safe, and heal, I think it’s crucial for a healthy community and for the true pursuit of truth and love. It just needs to be in service of love/truth, rather than an end unto itself. It needs to come authentically from the moment, not as a script or status signal or performance. We run into generative friction embracing the seeming paradox of this polarity all the time, and it is incredibly demanding of our facilitators to walk this tight rope. It demands that we are always changing, individually as leaders, as a community, and even the practice itself. Even our coaching teaches revealing identity commitments, inherently making the self an object in a larger self that can choose “yes” or “no” to, versus reinforcing a self and an existing worldview.

And even as we teach people how to meta-narrate as a way to witness and disembed themselves from unconscious habits that have been running them, we recognize that the compulsion to name and categorize experiences—spiritual or otherwise—often becomes a form of conceptual possession, serving self preservation rather than self-transformation.

(continued in comment)

(this will be sent out to my #TTT email in a couple of days, but UpTrust gets the early exclusive ;) )

On intimacy and sex in movies and TV. I was watching a movie a few weeks ago, and after a reunion thing between a man and a woman happened, there was this implied sense of knowing each other, of real connection, and then they immediately jumped into bed.  Something about this seemed totally off, and it occurred to me that sex in TV and movies is often used as a substitute for 'real' intimacy, that bc intimacy is so hard to do in real life, and likely harder in film, it's easier to just represent it with sex.

I suspect this has had a knock-on affect in that in consuming such representation, people have learned that the thing you do when you want to feel really connected/intimate with someone, is sleep with them.  Ofc, this isn't the height of intimacy, but a pale reflection of what is possible, and it's ability to create a sense of connection varies wildly.

I think Lalo, from Better Call Saul, is the only deeply embodied villain I've ever seen portrayed on television. He's embodied in both the sense that he has strong physical energy in every scene, and also importantly the way the character seems to navigate the world through intelligent, but 'non-conscious' actions. He's like, a Taoist hero.

It sharply contrasts him with the other villain, Gus, who is a cerebral planner thinking everything through. This difference goes hand in hand with their conflict. I thought both actors portrayed their roles and their mindsets magnificently; here's a great analysis of the subtle ways that Tony Dalton brought that to the role https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddXnhoQ1I-4&ab_channel=JustanObservation

#quicktakes

Erotic energy is often not about sex.
I think it is mostly an impulse to create something together. I don’t have a good model for the causal mechanism of how it works, but I think that attraction essentially hints at a specific potential between the two parties. Sex and “baby” is the creation-potential only a tiny fraction of the time.

Here are some of the many alternative creation-potentials, in no particular order. Would love to hear what else y’all notice, as this is not an attempt at an exhaustive list:

• A project for you to create together

  • as small as a party and as big as an organization

• An emotional gift one of you has for the other

  • eg: a piece of advice, sharing of life experience, an introduction to someone important

  • Similarly, information share—eg: a mutual friend needs to be taken care of 

• A quality or characteristic for you to integrate/embody more: The classic projection of a “golden shadow”

  •  Eg: “She’s so strong” because I’m not claiming my strength, or “he’s so smart” because I’m not comfortable admitting my own intelligence 

• A psychodynamic transformation (aka "healing")

  • Eg: you projecting your mom/dad stuff onto each other can be seen as a beautiful chance to make it conscious so you can be more present and available in all your relationships

• A different kind of relationship: Ongoing friendship, mentorship, employment, or some other awesome/potent relationship

• A chance to see what you’re avoiding in other relationships. This is the classic where someone cheats rather than deal with stuff at home.

---

You meet someone new and feel that sudden frisson of erotic excitement. That’s a crush—must be romantic love, right? We’ve watched it happen so many times in ourselves, our community, our movies and books, that it’s almost taken for granted. But I think as soon as I point out the alternatives, they seem obvious too. I wonder if there are other media and cultural narratives to help support more awareness of the alternative? I feel like this would help people be more open to different kinds of love, different kinds of relationships, and suffer a lot less. I feel like this awareness has done so for me, at least.

Hat Tip to Ken Wilber, where I first heard of using the word “eros” as the creative impulse of the universe driving to more novelty.

Timeline of Events in Brian Thompson Assassination. On December 4, 2024, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was assassinated outside the New York Hilton Midtown. The suspect, later identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, shot Thompson multiple times before fleeing on an e-bike. Thompson was pronounced dead shortly after. Mangione, who stayed in NYC for 10 days prior, was arrested on December 9 in Pennsylvania and charged with second-degree murder. The attack is believed to be a symbolic act targeting the healthcare industry.

November 24, 2024

• 10:11 p.m.: Suspect arrives in New York City on a Greyhound bus from Atlanta, Georgia.

November 24 – December 3, 2024

• Suspect checks into the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side using a falsified New Jersey ID and pays in cash.
• He stays at the hostel for ten days, checking out on December 3.

December 4, 2024

• 5:30 a.m.: Suspect leaves the hostel, likely by bike.
• 6:15 a.m.: Suspect exits the 57th Street F Train subway station.
• 6:17 a.m.: Suspect purchases coffee, water, and granola bars at a Starbucks near the New York Hilton Midtown hotel.
• 6:30 a.m.: Surveillance footage captures the suspect walking while talking on the phone.
• 6:39 a.m.: Suspect arrives in front of the New York Hilton Midtown hotel and waits.
• 6:44 a.m.: Brian Thompson leaves his hotel. The assailant shoots him multiple times, then flees northbound via a pedestrian walkway.
• 6:46 a.m.: Police respond to a 911 call reporting the shooting.
• 6:48 a.m.: Officers find Thompson with multiple gunshot wounds. He is taken to Mount Sinai West hospital. The assailant is seen riding an e-bike into Central Park.
• 6:59 a.m.: Suspect is seen riding a bike on West 85th Street.
• 7:04 a.m.: Suspect enters a northbound taxi at 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.
• 7:12 a.m.: Thompson is pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West hospital.

December 9, 2024

• Morning: Luigi Mangione, 26, is arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, in connection with the assassination.
• Afternoon: Mangione is charged with second-degree murder and other related offenses.

December 11, 2024

• Mangione appears in court, contests extradition to New York, and is held without bail pending a governor’s warrant.

Can someone actually have any Teal if they score 0% Orange, Amber, Red, and Magenta? Going through the scores of the Better Political Conversations quiz is fascinating. (reference: https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/we0q1pq/run)

Now, this very well could have been someone running an experiment to test the scoring, or to try to get a sense of a friend or family member, but they did give a name where a lot of people leave that blank.

Their scores are:
Teal 55%
Green 45%
Orange 0%
Amber 0%
Red 0%
Magenta 0%

Is it at all possible that someone could select every single response at Orange, Amber, Red, and Magenta as False, wrong, or just doesn’t make sense and have any actual Teal?

Also interesting, I got an email from someone who thinks of himself as primarily Orange, but was surprised that his quiz results came out 0% Orange. He referenced his Meyers-Briggs results as a reference in support. Utterly fascinated, I’ve asked him to let me know what correlation he sees between the Integral levels and Meyers-Briggs, and I’ve asked him what statements at Orange would have had his quiz results come out accurate for him.

Each time I make a significant edit in the content of the project I make a note of the change in the google sheet where I’m keeping track of scores. Here are the averages of the currently 75 scores:

Amber 26%
Green 25%
Teal 21%
Red 12%
Orange 11%
Magenta 5%

One blatant pattern I’m seeing is that high Green scores ALWAYS pair with a high score in Amber, and that people who have that pairing always score exceedingly low in Red and quite low in Orange.

Can someone actually have any Teal if they score 0% Orange, Amber, Red, and Magenta? Going through the scores of the Better Political Conversations quiz is fascinating. (reference: https://www.guidedtrack.com/programs/we0q1pq/run)

Now, this very well could have been someone running an experiment to test the scoring, or to try to get a sense of a friend or family member, but they did give a name where a lot of people leave that blank.

Their scores are:
Teal 55%
Green 45%
Orange 0%
Amber 0%
Red 0%
Magenta 0%

Is it at all possible that someone could select every single response at Orange, Amber, Red, and Magenta as False, wrong, or just doesn’t make sense and have any actual Teal?

Also interesting, I got an email from someone who thinks of himself as primarily Orange, but was surprised that his quiz results came out 0% Orange. He referenced his Meyers-Briggs results as a reference in support. Utterly fascinated, I’ve asked him to let me know what correlation he sees between the Integral levels and Meyers-Briggs, and I’ve asked him what statements at Orange would have had his quiz results come out accurate for him.

Each time I make a significant edit in the content of the project I make a note of the change in the google sheet where I’m keeping track of scores. Here are the averages of the currently 75 scores:

Amber 26%
Green 25%
Teal 21%
Red 12%
Orange 11%
Magenta 5%

One blatant pattern I’m seeing is that high Green scores ALWAYS pair with a high score in Amber, and that people who have that pairing always score exceedingly low in Red and quite low in Orange.

It's too intimidating for men to be men. Alright, here’s one of my most controversial opinions, and I’m gonna try to take the filter off as much as possible:

Feminism has played out as retribution instead of solution. The Barbie movie is an entirely thorough example of what I’m talking about. You suppressed us, so we’re gonna use any means necessary to take over. And then they recreated the same imbalance in its opposite.

I see most social movements do this too. True solutions to imbalances aren’t fair because they don’t have human-enacted payback. You suppressed us, so we’re going to move toward balance.

I’ve been spending about 2 years trying to set aside my learned default into my masculine energy (having grown up in highly feminist orange/green) and learn how to root in my feminine. But my feminine longs for a tether to something rooted. Masculine energy feels rooted, solid, grounded, and my feminine very much doesn’t (though it is held by a spacious ok-ness, but it’s so airy it easily gets chaotic when not balanced in connection with a grounded masculine.)

But I’ve had a hell of a time finding grounded healthy masculine men. Many of them can do it for a time, but then flee to an extreme, like angry resentment at one end and non-binary softness at the other end. And I think it’s because the culture has become super aggressive to men who are solidly men.

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

We need new gender categories, while preserving the distinctness of "man" and "woman". I don’t mind using different pronouns—I’m happy to love someone with whatever language they prefer.

But I’d like to propose that deconstructing traditional genders is not only unnecessary, it’s harmful.

Not necessary

• It’s not necessary because we’re free to create as many new genders as we’d like, while preserving the standard ones.

• This is the transcend and include approach, as far as I can tell. The current approaches I’ve seen are either all transcend (reject the historical categories) or all include (reject the creativity and proof-by-existence of new genders).

• I believe this will better honor the person who was misassigned a gender at birth, because their life experience is very different from someone who was assigned the gender they identify with. Eg: if I’m a trans-woman, I didn’t grow up with all the social pressures of being a woman, or going through a menstrual cycle, or whatever; I grew up feeling like a woman but getting the social pressures of being a man, going through the hormonal changes associated with male-body-ness. Which is a totally unique experience, that I will find more belonging and support from other people like me, not from trad-females.

Harmful

• It’s harmful because the people who want acceptance into the traditional category are never going to get it. Eg: If i’m a trans-woman, I was assigned male at birth, and I probably have some male parts and hormones and stuff, so when I try to identify as a woman and join in those discussions and groups that are for women I’m likely to always feel outside, different, and to a certain group of cis-women, threatening.

• This further divides society and polarizes certain populations against including the reality of the trans-experience, which then polarizes the trans-supporters, which begets the vicious cycle.

• Sex differentiation started around 1.2 billion years, so the male-female experience has ancient roots that are in our bodies and impacting us every single second. Denying this altogether is destroying massive chesterotn fences— denies tons of wisdom that is passed down not only culturally over the past 200,000 years, but instinctually for a billion.

What about bathrooms and sports?

Instead we can just have single stall bathrooms and locker-rooms. Or trad-male, trad-female, and a third for whoever of whatever gender, which is much larger than the trad lockerrooms and bathrooms. We can have a third category of sports—all gender. We’re creative, we’re growing, we have plenty of people to populate them and who will want to win, why stick with a binary?

I’m sure I’m missing something, and I apologize to the new-gendered people who I’m sure I’ve insulted or missed somehow. But, leaning in to potentially contentious convo…

I Don't Have To. I’ve had an intellectual understanding that I don’t have to do things, but I’ve recently realized that it was tethered to old beliefs. I don’t have to visit my grandmother if I’m willing to be a bad granddaughter/bad person. or I don’t have to buy my friend a birthday present if I’m willing to be a shitty friend.

I’m freshly looking at a new version of I don’t have to which is just a literal seeing of reality without the tether. I don’t have to clean up my stepmother’s hoarding house after she dies. It’s just true, I literally don’t have to.

Roads as interconnection of all, metaphor for selves. This is kinda silly and obvious in some ways, but the other day I was really struck by a simple fact I’d never considered: All the roads are really one road…

I live on Bryker Dr, and it dead ends into 34th street on one end and 30th on the other. So I think of this as a singular, discrete street that is 4 blocks long, and a couple car lengths wide. That’s how most people think they’re thinking about it.

But actually we’re all thinking of it as something much greater than that, we just don’t always realize we are. The street is my access to the rest of the world—and it is concretely (pun intended) connected to every other street in North America.

So is it really my street, or is it one giant system? My finger is obviously a finger, and obviously doesn’t exist separately from my body. If I were dismembered, it wouldn’t be my finger for very long, would it?

I think this is a beautiful metaphor for a self. We usually think we’re thinking of ourselves like we do roads, with beginnings and endings. But we’re actually the entire system, wholly interconnected with every other part. Getting from a small street in Austin to a small street in Winnipeg takes a long time, but in some incredibly real and grounded sense, there’s no separation between them.

( technically minus a few old roads that maybe don’t have any connections, but c’mon )