Dilara Findikoglu 'Bitter End Waistcoat' S/S 2023

A diver rises from the ooze with an intact Maya jar, perhaps a thousand years old. (1959) photog. Luis Marden

To restate it–my general theory of history (ok, it’s more like my general hunch of history)–is that all apparent social progress is made as our civilization gets better at processing its trauma, bc cycles of violence/trauma/childrearing (and the normalization of these things) largely explain why the past so often seems so inhumanly violent to us–public executions, chattel slavery, massacres, etc, etc.

And there are people in this day and age who nonetheless glorify those days–the thing that got me reading acoup’s series on Sparta was his series on the Fremen Mirage, the illusion (delusion?) so often received in pop-history and in books like Starship Troopers that there’s this distinction between ““““decadent”““ non-militarized, peaceful societies and “morally pure” societies (militarily strong societies, i.e., societies that have value bc they are good at generating and exporting violence)

And–and I’m just spitballing here, I have very little evidence to back this up–I suspect that if you scratch contemporary subcultures where that kind of idolization of a militarized past occurs, where the atrocities–not even the atrocities in service of some cause, just the senseless, pointless, stupid violence–of societies like Rome and Sparta get brushed under the rug, you will find subcultures where people are much more traumatized than elsewhere by abusive, authoritarian, and outright violent upbringings, where the correlation of “authority figure” and “source of shame and pain” is much, much tighter.

Because if you are raised in, or still live in, a shitty, abusive environment, there are two ways you can deal with this: either you can say, this is awful, this is monstrous, no one should have to live like this (and if you do, so much the worse if the whole world is like that, or if it feels like the whole world is like that, because it is painful indeed to look at the world and think ‘oh my, it is full of pain and injustice and there is nothing I can do about it’), or “well, there’s a reason for all this misery.” The reason is ‘because it makes us stronger.’ Or the reason is ‘because it makes us more morally pure.’ Or the reason is ‘because God (or Lycurgus, or Odin, or the Emperor) commanded it.’ Sometimes–at least for some people–the worst possible outcome is that your suffering would have no meaning. It’s not just “well, I had to endure this, so why shouldn’t they?” Or rather, it is, but the core of that sentiment is, “how come I had to suffer?” and the desperate hope that, well, as long as other people are suffering, too, your suffering must have some kind of meaning. That’s Just The Way The World Is, After All. What’s the other possibility? You got fucked over, for no reason?

Sometimes when I’m reading about history, especially in its grimmer parts, I have this momentary feeling–not much more than a fleeting mental image, really. It’s an image of every human being since the dawn of time, as the tiny child we all once were at some stage, groping desperately in the dark for a way to understand the world we were dumped into. But we’re all, in one way or another, still one of those tiny children, with all that entails: a deep deficiency of understanding, a certain inescapable impatience and hotheadedness, cooperative creatures which nonetheless have a terrible fear of pain. In such a world, it feels like the only reasonable response is to try to cultivate a neverending source of compassion within oneself, to try to be as patient as possible with others, who are often just as alone and afraid as we are. After all, it’s what I hope they would do for me.

Rare photos of the Capital of Palestine in 1920 which is 28 years before the born of the Israeli occupation

Jade Blue & Shane, San Francisco, 1997, Charles Gatewood, Badlands (1999)

girl help. I got high and read the cruel and self-centered opinions of the imperial core's middle class, now I feel hopeless about the state of the world where once I was simply apathetic to said middle-classes insignificant understanding of the world and I don't know how to achieve peace of mind

puyi was the last qing emperor of china. as a child he would regularly have his servants flogged and shoot at them with a BB gun. as an adult he continued this cruelty and ran the japanese puppet state of manchukuo, presiding over countless war crimes. when he was imprisoned by the CCP, he was confronted with people he'd hurt: his concubines, the victims of japanese massacres, people who had worked and starved in manchukuo's factories. he realsed what he'd done--overwhelmed with guilt, he considered suicide.

after nine years in prison, he was released. he led an ordinary life as a street sweeper. he was apologetic to waiters in restaurants--they reminded him too much of having servants. he took care to be the last person on the bus. he acted in plays as a hobby. he was happily married to a hospital nurse, who said of her husband: 'When I was having even a slight case of flu, he was so worried I would die, that he refused to sleep at night and sat by my bedside until dawn so he could attend to my needs'

there's no amount of cruelty that cannot be unlearned. there is no level of self-centredness or brutality that cannot be recovered from. the people with these cruel opinions--maybe they'll die like that. but they have within them somebody kind and gentle. the possibility for such a person exists within everybody, without exception. so don't be hopeless when you see cruelty. just steel your heart and tell yourself that not only are there good people--but that cruel people can one day be good. that there is hope for every human being and so there is hope for the world

My hot take is that I feel like “ghibli films are pro Japanese imperialism” is a lazy jab that grabs at a few soft spots in the oeuvre to make the cheapest most rhetorically damaging shot it can, and that an honest analysis would generally struggle to say even the most problematic of the movies like The Wind Rises come out of the wash with a positive opinion of imperial Japan. My hotter take is that if you rigorously pull at the threads where the nominally anti-war films thematically collapse, you’ll find the issue isn’t a support of Japanese Imperialism but a lack of a rigorous critique of industrial civilization.

kyla mccallum

basically, i think the general rule of thumb is: if someone REALLY wants the blood that’s inside of your body, and they’re like… a vampire, or a dracula, or some sort of mansquito, then that’s probably okay. a dracula and a mansquito are made for removing things like blood and swords from inside your body. that’s basically fine.

if something wants to get at your blood, and they’re, say, some kind of murdersaurus, or maybe a really big frog, that’s where the problems start to arise. a really frog is not made for removing blood, and your blood knows this, which is why it is so vehement about wanting to stay IN your body instead of coming out. 

unfortunately this will not deter a really big frog, because a really big frog is full of things like prizes, and value, and quite a lot of hatred, and it would REALLY rather like to replace any and all of those things with your blood, and basically by any means possible.

photography by alexandra leese