In the most rigorous articulation of his philosophical system to date, Slavoj Zizek provides nothing short of a new definition of dialectical materialism.
In forging this new materialism, Zizek critiques and challenges not only the work of Alain Badiou, Robert Brandom, Joan Copjec, Quentin Meillassoux, and Julia Kristeva (to name but a few), but everything from popular science and quantum mechanics to sexual difference and analytic philosophy. Alongside striking images of the M�bius strip, the cross-cap, and the Klein bottle, Zizek brings alive the Hegelian triad of being-essence-notion. Radical new readings of Hegel, and Kant, sit side by side with characteristically lively commentaries on film, politics, and culture.
A fully democratic society relies on empowerment — self-empowerment and collective empowerment — and respect — self-respect, respect for others, respect for everyone’s essential equal value, respect for individual rights and liberty, and respect for everyone’s right to make ends meet and fully participate in society without being subjected to discrimination or oppression based on race, class, gender, or some other arbitrary characteristic.
Practicing how to be democratic — how to relate to others as equals with compassion — nurtures a more democratic society — a society with self-confident, assertive, respectful, empowered members. A democratic society, in turn, nurtures grassroots movements that promote ever more respect and empowerment — an upward, virtuous circle.
At the same time, however, self-centeredness and hyper-competition promote a lack of self-confidence and passivity among the general population, and, among activists, fragmentation and asymmetrical polarization — a downward, vicious circle that sucks ever more people into its vortex and may eventually hit bottom, unless we, the people, mobilize massive, grassroots movements to transform our nation into a compassionate community.
Book clubs, church groups, and activist committees often cultivate democratic equality. These groups are democracy laboratories that cultivate respect and empowerment.
Face-to-face, horizontal, self-regulating, self-perpetuating, peer-to-peer open-ended “democracy circles” explicitly committed to advancing “face-to-face democracy” could build on these examples. Organizations could incorporate such circles into their current work. Existing groups could supplement their activities with such open-ended dialog. And new circles could emerge independently, perhaps with two individuals inviting one or two others to form a circle, which would increase its numbers organically.
Many methods could be used to structure this face-to-face democracy. Systemopedia associates are engaged in brainstorming and evaluating some such options. Following is one possibility.
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Imagine: Democracy circles meeting in various countries endorse a brief set of core principles affirming democratic equality. Weekly or monthly, ten or so individuals who endorse these principles meet to discuss: How can we improve the world? Though this initial focus is relatively broad, dialogs often organically focus more narrowly for fifteen minutes or longer.
These groups use these guidelines:
Participants speak only if they’re holding the “talking stick,” which may be any object or a microphone.
Speakers talk for no more than two minutes.
When speakers finish, they recognize the next speaker by handing them the talking stick.
Individuals with mobility difficulties select the next speaker and ask someone to give the stick to that person.
Speakers respond to the previous speaker, and then shift the topic if they wish.
Speakers are encouraged to:
1) be respectful and avoid personal attacks or name-calling;
2) avoid going back and forth repeatedly with the same person, and;
3) call on people who haven’t spoken or spoken less, and perhaps ask: Does anyone who has not spoken wish to speak?
The facilitator convenes the dialog, explains the guidelines if need be, selects the first speaker randomly, uses a timer if necessary to restrain the speakers, leads the selection of the facilitator for the next session (this role rotates) and its time and/or location (if necessary), and adjourns the dialog.
Before convening, members socialize informally, which encourages the cultivation of joy. Some circles have a formal check-in with members reporting on how they’re feeling and/or recent events in their lives. Some groups ask members to report on their recent efforts, if any, with regards to: 1) self-improvement; 2) building community, and; 3) political action.
Using the talking stick contributes to a more thoughtful, orderly conversation. When the stick is being handed off, the silence enables people to better absorb what’s been said. The stick discourages interruptions, minimizes two people monopolizing the time by rapidly going back and forth, and enables the circle to be self-regulating without an established authority figure.
The relatively open focus — how can we improve the world? — avoids a time-consuming or top-down process of deciding on a more narrow focus and allows for:
spontaneity, which results in unanticipated insights;
the introduction of input based on last-minute current events;
consideration of issues related to self-development.
An international network of face-to-face democracy circles with members in many countries has led to a strong sense of community. Many members are active in a political organization. In some cases, all members of a particular circle belong to the same organization.
Regardless, meeting to discuss whatever’s on members’ minds concerning how to improve the world encourages and supports political activism and the growth of grassroots movements. These gatherings also counter disinformation with face-to-face communication from trusted friends.
Compared to more structured meetings with a narrow focus (as with book clubs, church groups, and activist committees), these loosely structured meetings allow for more open-ended dialog and mutual support. And rather than being relatively isolated from other similar groups, they’re linked together in an international community that encourages cooperation between nations to deal with global crises.
The horizontal structure nurtures mutual respect and strengthens the opportunity for everyone to participate on an equal basis. Peer support counters fear, hate, and egoistic power trips that undermine grassroots unity. In these and other ways, peer learning helps build people power and promote democratic equality. Setting a regular meeting time and/or location enables the group to be self-perpetuating.
Once introduced and publicized, this easy-to-adopt mechanism spread widely. Its peer-to-peer mechanism enables participants to speak from the heart, listen, learn, and brainstorm. These democratic dialogs help overcome isolation, enrich lives with meaning, strengthen the foundations of democracy, and encourage the growth of compassionate, grassroots movements. .
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Our society encourages everyone to climb social ladders, look down on those below, and dominate or submit. We learn that some one person must always be in charge. The dominant culture promotes arrogance, judgmental assumptions of superiority, feelings of inferiority, the need to prove one’s worth, and destructive polarization.
Upwardly mobile professionals specialize — as a way to get ahead and establish some economic security or gain some ego-gratifying status. They gain expertise in a narrow field, fragment reality, compartmentalize life, and split reality into dualities.
Face-to-face democracy can help us unlearn this conditioning and better see the connections between different realities and opinions. We can practice being respectful and learn to listen more closely, speak more clearly, empower ourselves, and support others to empower themselves.
In these ways, democracy circles can boost the growth of movements that support each other while continuing to work on their own priorities — dedicated to face-to-face democracy principles. Following is a draft proposal for principles that such a network might adopt.
Face-to-face Democracy
Core Principles
We support the growth of popular movements that:
serve humanity, the environment, and life itself
respect the essential equality of all human beings
encourage everyone to identify as a member of the human family
affirm individuals’ multiple identities
oppose efforts to dominate others due to one of their identities
rely on love and trust rather than hate and fear
channel anger productively
attract people with face-to-face community and caring friendships
honor their nation’s accomplishments, criticize its failures, and help build more perfect unions
fully represent and give voice to their people
helps transform their nation into a compassionate community that:
supports the rule of law, individual rights, and the freedom to engage in activities that do not deny freedom to others
encourages people to relate to others as individuals of equal worth
promotes partnerships that empower people
nurtures democracy throughout society
meets basic human needs
assures good living-wage job opportunities
protects free speech
makes it easy to vote
enables everyone to participate in society fully and productively
encourages supportive relationships with other countries, backs their right to self-determination, promotes human rights, and advocates peaceful resolution of conflicts with mediation and negotiation
pressures their government to implement compassionate policies supported by strong majorities of their people
engages in nonviolent civil disobedience and consumer boycotts when needed
encourages members of the movement to:
improve their emotional reactions
engage in honest self-examination
support each other with their personal and spiritual growth
avoid oppressive or disrespectful behavior
supports members who want to form small teams that share meals, strengthen connections, provide mutual support, and plan other activities
cooperates with movements in other countries that also serve humanity, the environment, and life itself.
This democracy movement can advances the steady, step-by-step, evolutionary, holistic, structural, systemic transformation of our society into a global community of compassionate communities.
Bruce Lee. Photo courtesy of the Bruce Lee Foundation archive.
Although Bruce Lee (November 27, 1940–July 20, 1973) is best known for his legendary legacy in martial arts and film, he was also one of the most underappreciated philosophers of the twentieth century, instrumental in introducing Eastern traditions to Western audiences. A philosophy major in college, he fused ancient ideas with his own singular ethos informed by the intersection of physical and psychological discipline, the most famous manifestation of which is his water metaphor for resilience.
Early in his career, Lee was systematically sidelined by Hollywood’s studio system, which operated with extreme racial bias and still used white actors in yellowface to portray Asian characters based on flat stereotypes. Over and over, Lee was told in no uncertain terms that white audiences simply wouldn’t accept an Asian man as a lead character in a movie.
Even when he finally broke through and was cast as a lead, the studios continued to treat him as a brainless robot, there to entertain with his kung-fu skills. When they tried to cut all the philosophy out of Enter the Dragon because they wanted a vacantly entertaining action movie, Lee refused to go on set for two weeks, insisting that the kung-fu and the philosophy were inextricably entwined, each the vehicle for the other. Hollywood eventually had to relent and it was precisely the philosophical dimension that rendered the movie — just before the release of which Lee met his untimely death — a cultural icon and a beacon of racial empowerment associated with the Black Power movement, later acquired by the Library of Congress as a “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” artifact.
Lee saw philosophy as inseparable from everyday life, just as he saw the mind as inseparable from the body, each end of the battery constantly charging the other. He recorded his rigorous workout routine alongside his philosophical meditations, which he fleshed out in the course of living. Like Oliver Sacks, who carried a notebook everywhere, Lee always had a tiny 2×3″ pocketbook with him, which he filled with everything from training regimens to the phone numbers of his pupils (who included trainees like Chuck Norris and Steve McQueen) to poems, affirmations, and philosophical reflections. Even his handwriting, meticulously neat and measured to fit the tiny page, radiates Lee’s formidable discipline and orderliness.
Bruce Lee. Photograph courtesy of the Bruce Lee Foundation archive
But perhaps the most notable portion of his pocketbooks — or day timers, as they were called — were his affirmations, reminiscent of the rules of conduct Nobel laureate André Gide penned in his youthful journal and of artist Eugène Delacroix’s diaristic self-counsel. In these notes to himself, Lee articulated his personal philosophies aimed concretely at his own growth but resonating with universally applicable insight into our common psychology, behavior, and human nature.
With special permission from the Bruce Lee estate, here is an exclusive look at several pages from his 1968 pocketbook, penned shortly before Lee’s twenty-eighth birthday, each transcribed below, beginning with Napoleon Hill’s “Daily Success Creed,” which Lee copied into his notebooks:
Archival material with exclusive permission from the Bruce Lee Foundation archive.
WILL POWER: — Recognizing that the power of will is the supreme court over all other departments of my mind, I will exercise it daily, when I need the urge to action for any purpose; and I will form HABIT designed to bring the power of my will into action at least once daily.
EMOTION: — Realizing that my emotions are both POSITIVE and negative I will form daily HABITS which will encourage the development of the POSITIVE EMOTIONS, and aid me in converting the negative emotions into some form of useful action.
REASON: — Recognizing that both my positive & negative emotions may be dangerous if they are not controlled and guided to desirable ends, I will submit all my desires, aims and purposes to my faculties of reason, and I will be guided by it in giving expression to these.
IMAGINATION: — Recognizing the need for sound PLANS and IDEAS for the attainment of my desires, I will develop my imagination by calling upon it daily for help in the formation of my plans.
MEMORY: — Recognizing the value of an alert memory, I will encourage mine to become alert by taking care to impress it clearly with all thoughts I wish to recall, and by associating those thoughts with related subjects which I may call to mind frequently.
SUBCONSCIOUS MIND: — Recognizing the influence of my subconscious mind over my power of will, I shall take care to submit to it a clear and definite picture of my CLEAR PURPOSE in life and all minor purposes leading to my major purpose, and I shall keep this picture CONSTANTLY BEFORE my subconscious mind by REPEATING IT DAILY.
CONSCIENCE: — Recognizing that my emotions often err in their over-enthusiasm, and my faculty of reason often is without the warmth of feeling that is necessary to enable me to combine justice with mercy in my judgments, I will encourage my conscience to guide me as to what is right & what is wrong, but I will never set aside the verdicts it renders, no matter what may be the cost of carrying them out.
When Lee felt that he had arrived at a particularly significant idea, he wrote it on the unlined back of a plain 3×5″ lined yellow notecard, which he signed, almost like a will or perhaps a contract with himself. He would often refine or copy reflections first recorded in his pocketbook onto the notecards reserved for only his firmest convictions and deepest dedications.
What makes the affirmations especially notable is that they fuse ancient philosophical and spiritual traditions (particularly Zen Buddhism’s ideas about character, the self, and the ego), questionable New Agey magical thinking, and habits of mind which contemporary psychology has since proven fruitful — a reminder that our personhood is a mashup of our era and our culture, with all their inherent knowledges and ignorances, and it is the way we combine the elements at our disposal that makes us who we are.
Archival material with exclusive permission from the Bruce Lee Foundation archive.
You will never get any more out of life than you expect
Keep your mind on the things you want and off those you don’t
Things live by moving and gain strength as they go
Be a calm beholder of what is happening around you
There is a difference a) the world b) our reaction to it
Be aware of our conditioning! Drop and dissolve inner blockage
Inner to outer ~~~ we start by dissolving our attitude not by altering outer condition
See that there is no one to fight, only an illusion to see through
No one can hurt you unless you allow him to
Inwardly, psychologically, be a nobody
Archival material with exclusive permission from the Bruce Lee Foundation archive.
I know that I have the ability to ACHIEVE the object of my DEFINITE PURPOSE in life; therefore I DEMAND of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action.
I realize the DOMINATING THOUGHTS of my mind will eventually reproduce themselves in outward, physical action, and gradually transform themselves into physical reality; therefore I will CONCENTRATE my thoughts for 30 min. daily upon the task of thinking of the person I intend to become, thereby creating in my mind a clear MENTAL PICTURE.
I know through the principle of autosuggestion, any desire that I PERSISTENTLY hold will eventually seek expression through some practical means of attaining the object back of it; therefore, I will devote 10 min. daily to DEMANDING of myself the development of SELF-CONFIDENCE.
I have clearly written down a description of my DEFINITE CHIEF AIM in life, and I will never stop trying until I shall have developed sufficient self-confidence for its attainment.
Complement with Lee on the crucial difference between pride and self-esteem, then tune into the excellent new Bruce Lee podcast, in which Lee’s daughter, Shannon, and creative director Sharon Lee unpack his philosophies and discuss how the abiding ideas behind each of his tenets apply to various aspects of our modern lives. You can help keep his legacy alive with a donation to the Bruce Lee Foundation.
This article was originally published on August 1, 2016, by Brain Pickings, and is republished here with permission.
The impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump has renewed focus on that of Andrew Johnson, the 17th U.S. president and the first to be impeached by the House. The Onion takes a look back at the timeline of President Johnson’s impeachment.
June 8, 1864:
Johnson selected as Abraham Lincoln’s running mate to balance ticket with someone who would completely fuck up post–Civil War reconstruction.
February 22, 1866:
Johnson endears self to Congress by expressing firm belief that Civil War just one big misunderstanding and nothing really needs to change.
March 1, 1867:
Johnson sets out to be impeached after realizing it only way we’d still be talking about him today.
February 21, 1868:
Johnson’s unlawful removal of Edwin Stanton as secretary of war without congressional consent sets important precedent for impeaching president on very specific technicality instead of overarching project of oppression and violence.
February 24, 1868:
House impeaches Johnson for “high crimes and misdemeanors,” a clear and specific designation everyone immediately understands.
February 25, 1868:
Johnson’s mugshot taken.
April 9, 1868:
Johnson goes around handing out series of pamphlets about key participants in impeachment trial during their statements.
April 11, 1868:
Democrat opposition subpoenas Abraham Lincoln’s corpse in reference to claims that it was his fault for dying in first place.
May 16, 1868:
Senator Edmund Ross (R-KS) makes still-baffling decision to vote for acquittal because he thinks it right thing to do, rather than because he thinks it will help his political career. He then loses reelection bid like an idiot.
May 26, 1868:
Senate acquits Johnson of all articles, sending strong message that violating Constitution is fine
THE HEAVENS—Expressing frustration at the pressure from his parents and siblings to visit more often, the immortal soul of deceased man Bryan Glench complained to reporters Wednesday about his loved ones being so far away from him, on the opposite side of heaven. “Don’t get me wrong, I like my family, but I hate schlepping all the way across kingdom come just to see them, you know?” said the disembodied spirit and former social media manager, observing that while time might be limitless in the afterlife, it was still a significant nuisance to travel from one end of paradise to the other. “They’re out past the bright light and then down another 20 clouds after that, and I just can’t be trekking clear over there and back all the goddamn time. Besides, all we ever do is sit around and make small talk about our everlasting lives. It’s just not worth it.” Asked if the isolation from his loved ones had made him lonely, Glench admitted he occasionally found himself wishing he had forgone a lifetime of piety and just gone straight to hell with all his friends.
The great Russian writer Leo Tolstoy begins his masterpiece Anna Karenina with a simple observation he then illuminates throughout the novel: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Some combination of attraction, intimacy, shared values, parenting philosophies, and so on are base requirements for the flourishing of a union between two people, and while they may deviate in detail here and there to account for our individual differences, they are all broadly non-negotiable if the union is to last to the satisfaction of each party over the long-term. A sustained deficiency in any one of these, however, is enough to crack the shield even if the others are accounted for. In other words: There is one general way to succeed, but many diverse ways to fail.
The scientist Jared Diamond codified this into a broader principle that applies to a variety of domains in his book Guns, Germs, and Steel. The idea applies to the functional role of animals in diverse ecosystems. It applies to how we build social structures when we try to engineer civilization. Essentially, it applies to anything that can be considered a complex system with many interacting parts and thus has many different points of failure.
The good thing is that the principle points to a solution in its framing: Figure out what the important things are and make sure that each one of them is accounted for. Make everything redundant. Just because you and your partner have great chemistry, for example, it doesn’t mean that you can rely on that at the expense of the experiences that bring you closer as compatible selves. Everything has to be constantly worked at, or the whole thing falls apart. Fair enough. But broadly applied to existence, this approach becomes a little more difficult. Much of life is unpredictable, ambiguous, and uncertain. We don’t always know what the important things are. What then?
Generally, when we make plans ahead of time, we try to predict what it is that will gratify a yearning in the future and then we work backward from there. It’s an attempt to figure out what the important things are before the experiential wisdom has been acquired to make that judgment in a meaningful and accurate way. The thing about predictions is that the world is always in flux, and we change, systems change, cultures change, and all of these things are themselves part of a broader ecosystem that isn’t concerned with our own personal predictions. Imagining a concrete ideal in the future is an inherently futile exercise because it assumes that reality will remain static while we dynamically evolve forward.
When it comes to things that we have immense data on — say, like successful marriages — part of the work is done, and we can use that as a pointer. But we all have our own version of life that, sooner or later, diverges away from an average statistic. We may sit at the center of the Gaussian bell-curve much of the time, but the parts that make us who we truly are, the ones that shape our individual self, are generally ones which deviate away from this center, and that makes it nonsensical for us to apply populational data.
There may be one general way to succeed and many ways to fail, but we generally don’t know what success — or happiness, or satisfaction, etc. — look like until we actually experience them as a day to day part of our reality. That said, we generally do have a very good intuition for what failure is, even in the present, even without the aid of prediction. Happiness may be nebulous, but suffering is not. Health metrics may never measure peak fitness and general conditioning precisely, but the effects of sickness are clear. And they are clear immediately. There is no information asymmetry across time.
Negative things exist, concretely and obviously. You can argue all you want about what objectively constitutes as pain and suffering, but when you stub your toe on the chair or when a loved one dies, it is clear that you experience a version of reality that is less ideal than it could be, and that it would be worthwhile for you to interpret the signal that this reality is sending you and then do something that helps you move on.
We spend much of life chasing positive things. We have an inherent bias towards a future that is better than today, and that motivates us to act and to create and to build and to care. But the great paradox of life is that we are all too different for the positive, or for this sense of betterment, to make itself visible to us based on someone else’s experience. Quite often, these things are blurry until we are close enough to actually see them. Even something like a happy family — which Tolstoy argues is the same for everyone, which something like science can point towards with data — ends up meaning different things to different people, even accounting for shared elements, because every happy family has its own spice to mix all of those elements together, and that spice can’t be invented with a formula.
Looking for happiness is a great way to never experience it. Most of us are familiar with the shallow feeling that comes over when we finally get what we want, what we have sacrificed for. While that feeling may be temporarily nice, for the majority of people, an emptiness soon takes over. And the only thing that makes it go away is if we find something else to chase, which then sends us up and up on a path to nowhere until we crash.
This backwardness leaves us with three conclusions: negative things are real enough to be managed, we are bad at predicting positive things for ourselves (even with the help and wisdom of others), and we all create our own spice in life that makes things work for us in our own way.
One of the big breakthroughs in our understanding of how the scientific method allows for innovation came from the philosopher of science Karl Popper in the 20th century, and his idea was this: We can’t ever say for certain that something is true, but we can know when something contradicts reality and then remove it from contention. It’s called falsifiability. For a scientific hypothesis to be taken seriously, it has to be capable of being proven wrong. Truth, then, becomes an evolving process. It is no longer about being completely right all the time, but it’s about eliminating what doesn’t work and making incremental progress towards the future.
We can apply this same idea to life. In the face of uncertainty, we are never going to be able to predict the future or create any satisfying vision in the present for how it should play out. That just ends up boxing reality into a predetermined shape rather than letting it freely flow into something more. That said, there are some negative things that are obviously painful and meaningless and problematic in life, and they provide important information about what we don’t want, and that should be used liberally.
We can and should use the wisdom of others, of science and data, literature and philosophy, to point us in the right direction, but the image we are pointing to should only become clear when we are close enough to see it for ourselves. And the only way to get closer to it is to iterate away the mistakes and the problems that come up as we move through time. And over a long enough period, by continually doing this, two things happen: a) we improve and become individualized by solving useful problems; b) that improvement and individualization begin to generate the spice that emergently arises to combine the remaining elements of success together.
The Anna Karenina principle captures an important truth: There are more ways to fail than there are to succeed. But Tolstoy missed a crucial ingredient in his famous sentence. Just because there are fewer ways to succeed doesn’t mean everybody succeeds in exactly the same way because success itself has many different sides, with many different shapes carved out, depending on who the experiencer of that success is.
When applied to people and the uncertainties they deal with, what we are left with is this: All happy people are alike in having found their differences; each unhappy person is unhappy for failing to solve a problem. Personal Growth
Playing at the intersection of science, art, and philosophy. Trying to be less wrong. I share my more intimate thoughts at www.designluck.com/community.
Blessed Bernardo Francisco de Hoyos y de Seña is an 18th-century Spanish priest who wrote vividly of his mystical gay marriage to Jesus. This queer saint was beatified in 2010 and his feast day is Nov. 29.
Bernardo (1711-1735) was 18 when he had a vision of marrying Jesus in a ceremony much like a human wedding. He described it this way:
Always holding my right hand, the Lord had me occupy the empty throne; then He fitted on my finger a gold ring…. “May this ring be an earnest of our love. You are Mine, and I am yours. You may call yourself and sign Bernardo de Jesus, thus, as I said to my spouse, Santa Teresa, you are Bernardo de Jesus and I am Jesus de Bernardo. My honor is yours; your honor is Mine. Consider My glory that of your Spouse; I will consider yours, that of My spouse. All Mine is yours, and all yours is Mine. What I am by nature you share by grace. You and I are one!” (quoted from “The Visions of Bernard Francis De Hoyos, S.J.” by Henri Bechard, S.J.)
Bernardo’s vision inspired artist-priest William Hart McNichols to paint an icon of Bernardo’s wedding with Jesus.
“I was so taken with this profoundly beautiful account of Jesus’ mystical marriage with Bernardo, including all the symbols of a human wedding,” McNichols wrote.
Bernardo’s experiences fit into a long tradition of “mystical marriage” comparing the soul’s union with God to a human wedding. It is also called nuptial mysticism or bridal mysticism.
Official Roman Catholic accounts emphasize how Bernardo went on to become “the first apostle of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in Spain,” but the church downplays the queer vision that inspired him. Bernardo’s marriage with Christ can justifiably be interpreted as a “gay Jesus” story.
Bernardo spent nine years in the Jesuit formation process and was ordained in January 1735. His pastoral ministry was cut short later that same year when he died of typhus on Nov. 29, 1735. Some call him a “boy saint” because he only lived to be 24. His dying words indicate that he felt the presence of his Spouse Jesus at the end. Bernardo’s last words were, “Oh, how good it is to dwell in the Heart of Jesus!”
After his death Bernardo’s reputation for holiness continued to grow, but church politics slowed his path to sainthood until recently. His beatification ceremony was held in April 2010 in the northwestern Spanish province of Valladolid, where Bernardo spent his entire life.
While the Catholic church refuses to bless same-sex marriages, the lives and visions of its own saints tell a far different story — in which Christ the Bridegroom gladly joins himself in marriage with a man.
It is also part of the Queer Christ series series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. The series gathers together visions of the queer Christ as presented by artists, writers, theologians and others.
Founder at Q SpiritKittredge Cherry is a lesbian Christian author who writes regularly about LGBTQ spirituality.She holds degrees in religion, journalism and art history.She was ordained by Metropolitan Community Churches and served as its national ecumenical officer, advocating for LGBTQ rights at the National Council of Churches and World Council of Churches.
According to Gary Chapman’s theory of love languages, different people need different things in order to feel loved. Some people will feel most appreciated when they spend quality time with their loved ones, while others prioritize physical touch, and still others need words of affirmation in order to feel truly cherished. Show your affection to your partner in their preferred manner, the theory goes, and it will go a long way toward reducing conflict.
But while it’s undoubtably true that one person’s charming weekend getaway gift is another person’s stress-filled organizational quagmire, a new study suggests that—among Americans, at least—there’s a fair amount of consensus around which gestures are most likely to make people feel loved.
In a study published in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, researchers from Pennsylvania State University and the University of California, Irvine, asked 495 men and women in the US to complete an online survey that presented them with 60 different scenarios. Respondents were instructed to respond to statements about each scenario, such as, “Most people feel loved when someone is there to just listen,” with “True,” “False,” or “Don’t Know.” (Importantly, researchers asked the participants to answer based on how they thought a majority of people would feel—not based on their own personal emotional programming.)
The study, led by Saeideh Heshmati and Zita Oravecz, the latter of whom co-authored a 2016 paper on the same subject, identified some behaviors that nearly all participants agreed would make people feel loved. There was strong consensus around the following four scenarios:
When someone shows compassion toward them in difficult times
When a child snuggles up to them
When their pets are happy to see them
When someone tells them “I love you”
Notably, none of those behaviors are associated exclusively with romantic partners—a finding in keeping with the authors’ conclusion that “people feel loved in a range of settings much wider than just romantic relationships, which included momentary everyday interactions and experiences with friends, pets, and family.” Indeed, studies have shown that simply making eye contact with dogs increases their owners’ level of oxytocin, also known as the “love hormone” because it promotes bonding. A parent who cuddles with their kid will get a big dose of oxytocin, too. And anyone who’s had a friend call them up after a bad day, or exchanged an “I love you” with a trusted family member, can attest to the power of these small but meaningful gestures.
Another noteworthy takeaway: Despite the popularity of romantic tales about ultra-controlling men like Fifty Shades‘ Christian Grey or Twilight‘s Edward Cullen, most Americans agree that in the real world, possessive behavior doesn’t make people feel loved. Scenarios in which “someone wants to know where you are at all times,” “someone tells them what is best for them,” “someone is possessive about them” were all rated unlikely to spark feelings of warmth and tenderness.
When taking factors like race and gender into account, the study found that some groups were more likely to differ from the consensus on the situations most likely to inspire feelings of love. Male participants were more likely to give responses that differed from the majority consensus—perhaps, the researchers suggest, because the study focused on nonsexual love. (Previous research has shown that men, broadly speaking, tend to think about love in terms of intimate physical relationships.) Black participants were also more likely to be outside the consensus, which the researchers attribute to the fact that the majority of respondents were white, and so the consensus reflects white cultural norms.
The study’s authors acknowledge that their research is limited when it comes to how different factors may affect people’s interpretations of love, particularly when it comes to cross-cultural beliefs. Still, the study is a nice reminder of the simple things all of us can do to show our appreciation for one another.
This article was originally published on December 24, 2018, by Quartz, and is republished here with permission.
Physical contact remains vital to health, even as we do less of it. The rules of engagement aren’t necessarily changing—they’re just starting to be heard.
Tiffany Field has spent decades trying to get people to touch one another more.
Her efforts started with premature babies, when she found that basic human touch led them to quickly gain weight. An initial small study, published in the journal Pediatricsin 1986, showed that just 10 days of “body stroking and passive movements of the limbs” for less than an hour led babies to grow 47 percent faster. They averaged fewer days in the hospital and accrued $3,000 less in medical bills. The effect has been replicated multiple times.
Field, a developmental psychologist by training, went on to found the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine. She was a pioneer in highlighting the effects of “touch deprivation” among kids, famously those in orphanages. She explained to me that the effects are pervasive, influencing so many bodily systems that kids are diagnosed with “failure to thrive,” resulting in permanent physical and cognitive impairment, smaller stature, and social withdrawal later in life—which often includes aversion to physical contact.
Physical touch doesn’t make adults larger, but its effects are still coming to light. Field has published similar findings about the benefits of touch in full-term infants, and then children and pregnant women, adults with chronic pain, and people in retirement homes. Studies that involved as little as 15 daily minutes found that touch alone, even devoid of the other supportive qualities it usually signifies, seems to have myriad benefits.
The hug, specifically, has been repeatedly linked to good health. In a more recent study that made headlines about hugs helping the immune system, researchers led by the psychologist Sheldon Cohen at Carnegie Mellon University isolated 400 people in a hotel and exposed them to a cold virus. People who had supportive social interactions had fewer and less severe symptoms. Physical touch (specifically hugging) seemed to account for about a third of that effect. (The researchers conclude: “These data suggest that hugging may act as an effective means of conveying support.”) Cohen and his colleagues continued to show other health benefits of physical contact, such as a 2018 reveal in the journal PLOS titled “Receiving a Hug Is Associated With the Attenuation of Negative Mood That Occurs on Days With Interpersonal Conflict.”
Part of the reason this research didn’t happen sooner is that it was seen as extremely obvious. Yet even as evidence of the importance of physical touch has piled up, the world has been moving in the opposite direction. “You don’t see people touching each other anymore, in large part because they’re all on their phones and iPads and computers,” Field said. “It’s very disturbing to see parents doing less touching of kids, if they’re just sitting there on screens.”
The dissonance of people benefiting from touch but doing less of it is only made more confusing by statements like Joe Biden’s. In a video posted to his Twitter account in April 2019, a response to widespread concerns about excessive hugging and incidents of hair sniffing and the like during his time as vice president, the 2020 presidential candidate said he had no intention of making anyone uncomfortable. He then pivoted to claim that people are less open to being touched: “Social norms have begun to change. They’ve shifted, and the boundaries of protecting personal space have been reset, and I get it, I get it. I hear what they’re saying. I understand it.”
The explanation raises the question: Are boundaries changing? (And does Biden get it?)
The research is clear on that fact that people both need and react well to physical touch—in controlled environments. There is no evidence that people like to be touched any less than in previous generations, only that negatively received touch is more openly vocalized. What’s new is that people who didn’t appreciate being touched in previous decades, or who were always made uncomfortable by it, especially from people in positions of power, are empowered to process the fact that it’s not something they need to put up with. They have platforms for speaking up, channels for recourse, and supportive listeners to cushion the blowback.
“There is a lot of research on how touch is hierarchical, and males can touch females but not vice versa,” Field said, noting that caretakers in nursing homes tend to touch female residents much more than males, and the latter are at higher risk of touch deprivation. “I think some of that is reflected in what’s going on, where people are seeing the hierarchical aspect of the touch and not the supportive aspect.”
Attributing situations like Biden’s to an overall change in people’s willingness to be touched is a sweeping claim that stands to make a physically isolated culture even more so. As we get more isolated, Field argues, we need platonic touch more than ever, even if we don’t realize it. A vicious cycle is happening, wherein the less people initiate, the more abnormal it seems when someone does, and the more likely it is to be upsetting. “I think Biden’s got it right that it’s generally good to show physical affection as a way of supporting people,” Field said—with the caveat that any touch is imbued with meaning, and that people bring different histories to their responses.
So how should a person go about touching?
It’s not that there are new, mysterious rules that are constantly changing, Field said. Limits of acceptability have always existed. The key to practicing touch well is to appreciate the emotional power—which is the basis of all the positive effects, and so the basis of much potential for negativity. If anything, knowing that people bring a history of emotional experiences to each new touch can inform better, healthier interactions.
The phenomenon of reacting to touch is often described as an autonomous pathway, which it technically is: Receptors in the skin detect pressure and temperature and movement, and these signals shoot up the spinal cord and into the brain, which adjusts its chemical output accordingly. That the emotional responses become physical in predictable patterns suggests that our bodies evolved to respond favorably to touch—or at least, to miss out on benefits when we are physically isolated. MRI scans show physical touch activating areas of the cerebral cortex, and other studies show decreased heart rate, blood pressure, and levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol. Massage therapy has proven effective for depression, and neurotransmitters that modulate pain are stimulated by touch.
It’s as if all the things we’re promised in bottles of dietary supplements and luxury serums is right there in one act that can be costless and readily available.
But even for all the benefits shown in research, it’s not so simple as to say that hugs are good or hugging is healthy. If it were, we’d all have hug robots that we’d hug all the time. Some of us would get addicted. Some would die of dehydration in the arms of the machine. Even people who have no memory of being touched can be affected by it. A hand on the shoulder, one study found, made subjects more likely to agree to a request. Though the firing of synapses in the skin that fly up to the brain is an automated process, it’s modulated by other inputs. The exact same touch would likely be received differently from a person who is smiling versus a person who is laughing maniacally.
The simplistic message that personal boundaries are being redrawn is a missed opportunity to think about how touch is supposed to work. This doesn’t need to draw on some idea of political correctness; it’s right there in the studies. None of the touch studies involved unwanted, unexpected, or unpredictable touch. For example, Field did a study to see whether the effects of massage therapy were different in people who had and had not experienced past sexual abuse, and there was no apparent difference—both groups saw similar benefits. But this should not be expected to apply to the way both groups would react if a man on the subway initiated a shoulder massage.
The unwanted hug is an act on a spectrum of submission that produces neurochemical responses similar to any other violation of autonomy, from having a credit-card number stolen to feeling your car lose traction on the highway. A perceived absence of control becomes a spilling of neurotransmitters from the brain into the blood. If a boundary is being redrawn, it’s around people’s ability to continue to make others feel that. The benefits of a hug evaporate when a person perceives it as aggression. The trove of pro-touch research involves consenting volunteers and professional researchers in controlled scenarios where the interaction isn’t loaded with potential for escalation, or imbued with subtext or meaning based on prior interactions. In the real world, the exact same touch might cause blood pressure and heart rate to increase, and stress hormones to surge.
If it can be said that touch has medicinal properties, then, like any medicine, touch is not good for everyone in every situation. To play the metaphor out: Appropriate dosages vary, and any particular responses are dependent on what’s already going on with that person. This is why many doctors start a medication at a low dose and monitor the patient’s response closely. If it’s well received, the doctor can titrate dosing up and, over time, be less vigilant about monitoring for adverse reactions.
The analogy, of course, isn’t perfect, but experts in platonic touch advise the same: Start with small gestures. Some people might recoil at a touch on the shoulder; others will reach back and touch yours. It is not some mysterious code that should scare people into simply never trying to touch anyone—but it is a code predicated entirely on power dynamics. Just because a person is not actively pushing someone else away does not mean that touch is well received. Active reciprocity may be the surest sign, though even that is imperfect.
If the current lexicon of physical touch feels too loaded with meaning, there is also room for innovation. Americans largely practice one of two types of hug: the full-body press that’s generally reserved for close relationships, or the “A frame” type: bending at the back, partially twisting, and barely even touching. There are many ways to deviate from the hug canon in less awkward and potentially even fun ways, Field noted, citing a book of hugs numbering more than 300 in type—written by someone named “Dr. Hug,” whose credentials I can’t verify. “We’re getting a lot of calls about cuddling groups,” Field said with some degree of marvel, “which I think is related to a decline in touch not just among strangers, but even among intimate couples.”
In his statement, Biden went on to say that he is always seeking out “human connection” because “life is about connecting to people.” This is difficult to disagree with, but it carries the implicit qualifier that life is about connecting with people in meaningful, mutually beneficial ways. People always have and always will find meaning in life via positive connection, and there is all the more reason to consider the role of physical touch in that.
Field is already hearing from men who have told her that after “this Biden episode,” they believe they need to wait for women to initiate physical contact, if there is to be any. “I do think men need to be more careful. Which can be unfortunate for genuinely affectionate people,” Field said. “And if women want to be touched, then it may be that they’re going to have to initiate.”James Hamblin, MD, is a staff writer at The Atlantic. He hosts the video series If Our Bodies Could Talk and is the author of a book by the same title. | More
This article was originally published on April 10, 2019, by The Atlantic, and is republished here with permission.
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