Whether you embrace or reject the ongoing Occupy Wall Street movement swarming across the Western world right now, I think all ought to take a gander at this interesting op-ed piece I found on Forbes' website. The author, a clinical psychologist, argues that true democracy and capitalism lays at the heart of the OWS movement. The following is an excerpt in which he explains the difference of motives between OWS and the Tea Party:

From the start the Tea Party was about safety through exclusion, protecting oneself from outside influences—including a President seen as an un-American “other,” perhaps for racial reasons, perhaps other reasons as well. What the Tea Party rejected was anything perceived by them as coming from outside the center of America. It’s not us, it’s never us; it’s them. Bad things were by definition “un-American” or “against the Constitution.”

America, the true America uncontaminated by outside influence, is therefore exceptional by definition. And not just exceptional, but Exceptional. We’re good, they’re bad, regardless of who they are and what we do. No matter that you have no job, no healthcare; you’re an American and your suffering is “their” fault. This Tea Party message soothes through exclusion. What we now need to do is close ranks, reduce outside influence and go back to how wonderful it used to be when we were uncontaminated by outsiders. America, real America, the America envisioned by our Founding Fathers, is where goodness is found. Lock the doors and windows; never explain, never excuse; don’t tread on me. Of course, the price paid for such a pristine American vision of self is always feeling persecuted by neighbors against whom one must remain constantly vigilant.

The start of OWS is radically different. Everyone is included, everyone gets to have a say. Rather than policy they have process. The “we” of OWS is worldwide, a globalized, networked “we” full of good and bad existing simultaneously and everywhere. The messier the better; better to let in those you don’t want then miss out on including those you do. Of course, inclusion can be a big problem because people say and do lots of really stupid things. And all that stupidity is then felt as “us,” not “them.” But that’s the trade-off of inclusion; you have to take the good along with bad.

This path to a better America, a better world, includes living with some fear that getting your needs met might mean hurting someone else about whom you care. Rather than the constant state of hyper-vigilance that comes from the Tea Party’s psychology of exclusion, OWS inclusion carries with it a sadness that no repair is ever perfect, that even the most exceptional America possible will still and always fall short of our aspirational ideals. And beneath the various critiques, like the ratio of CEO to worker compensation almost doubling in the last 10 years, there is a wild optimism at the wooly center of OWS. You see it at the marches, in the music, when you listen to people at Zuccotti Park organizing the clean-up to avoid police action. What becomes clear through a psychological lens is the optimism of cooperation and relationship, of being imperfect together, of searching for repair as community even while knowing no repair is perfect.

You can find the full article here.

This artist, this one right here:  purplepardus is giving away a couple of free bust sketches. First come first serve! Oh, and be sure to give her a watch, as she draws quite well. :3

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/2769459/

This is an excerpt from the vaults of eternal wisdom that are Cracked.com The article is called "6 Supposedly Ancient Traditions (That Totally Aren't)." Raging Islamic Fundamentalism is #4 on the list. Here is the entire entry:

The Tradition:

The boogeyman that replaced the specter of communism in the hearts of terrified Westerners, Islamic fundamentalism seems to come from another time. They rage against science, Western ideals and the basic rights of women. That's why you hear people on Fox News claiming that the Muslim world is stuck in the Dark Ages.

How Old It Actually Is:

Actually, the Middle East's clock stopped around the same time as the one at Marty McFly's high school in the 1950s. If the Arab world was really still stuck in the Middle Ages, everyone would be a lot better off.

Who Made It Up?

During the period the Western world thinks of as the Dark Ages, when Europeans were busy murdering each other over matters of religion and superstition, Islam was cool as a cucumber. At the time, Islamic regions were actually more accepting of Judaism and Christianity than most of the Christian world was of Judaism and other types of Christianity. Long before the Italian Renaissance, the Islamic Empire realized the Greeks and Romans had been on to something with this book learning stuff, and used this realization to revolutionize astronomy, literature, physics, philosophy and architecture. Still bored, they went ahead and invented algebra and modern medicine too.

The antiquated practices many Westerners associate with modern Islam are actually a relatively recent development. Reporting from Saudi Arabia for The New Yorker, Lawrence Wright interviewed an older Saudi man who reminisced about the good old days when men and women used to be able to celebrate weddings together. While it might seem weird to Westerners used to hearing stories of ankle length hemlines following the words "Back in my day... ," in the Middle East, when grandparents miss the good old days, they're often talking about a place that was far less up its own ass.

It wasn't until the 1950s that fundamentalist Islam started gaining influence, and outdated, dying traditions like the veil saw a spike in popularity. That's when followers of a fringe 18th century scholar Mohammed Al Wahab began to take Islam back to basics, which in this case meant an imaginary past where women were treated like shit and all the pesky "progress" of the last 1400 years never happened. During his lifetime, Wahab was taken about as seriously as Pat Robertson is taken today in the West. But in the 1950s, Wahabi Muslim thinkers like Sayyid Qutb started to urge total separation between Islam and the West, arguing that the outside world had "nothing else to give humanity."

Qutb and his fundamentalist contemporaries inspired a new generation of radical thinkers, who took this "fuck the West" mentality a few steps further, resulting in a Middle East that is far less progressive than the Dark Ages they're supposedly stuck in.

See, as tempting as it might be to divide history into the bad guys and the good guys, civilizations tend to evolve more like the Batman franchise, kicking ass part of the time, and reaching unspeakable, ass backwards lows that would embarrass their ancestors at others. Muslim people were doing algebra while we were burning women for having funny birthmarks on their face. They just happen to be going through their Batman and Robin phase.

You guys should totally check out  kaitycuddle She does some good work, and she's really nice. ^.=.^

Then why don't you critique it? How am I supposed to know people read and like my stuff if you guys keep quiet. It's why I stopped uploading here, because my stuff never got comments or faves. I got a few more comments when I threatened to wipe my gallery, but my watchers need to be a bit more proactive. What can I do to improve? What more would you like to see? Is feedback too much to ask for? I ask because people leave Sofurry for Fur Affinity because "the community is better" and "I get more meaningful feedback." Well? Where is it? Am I not good enough to deserve a little feedback?

You managed to ruin my absolute favorite genre of fiction: alternate history. I tuned in to watch the latest Deadliest Warrior (managed to see Teddy Roosevelt eviscerate Lawrence of Arabia, fuck yeah!) Instead of another episode, this show called Alternate History came on. It postulated a German WW2 victory, and a Nazi America. Intrigued, I am currently watching it, and am typing this during the first commercial break.

I should have known better than to expect good alternate history from Spike. The point of diversion is very vague and uneducated. They made some extremely oversimplified assumptions (according to them, had Hitler mass produced the Me-262, he would have repelled the D-day invasion. Then he would have nuked Boston and New York and FDR would have surrendered. Completely ignored the Eastern Front in all this). They also didn't do any fact checking, and their "experts" are from FOX.

I do believe it is possible that the Germans could have won the war out of sheer dumb luck, but it would have required a LOT of PODs (most of which contribute to beating the Soviets). They give Hitler way too much credit. He was at a huge disadvantage from the start. He only got to Paris because France was still weak from WWI, and Britain was reluctant to jump into another war. Stalin's sucky military organization and the results of starvation and the Great Purges also helped get Hitler as far as he did. As Cracked.com put it: "Hitler is the bastard who knows nothing about Texas Hold Em but somehow keeps winning hands purely by luck."

So yeah, interesting concept, but terribly under-researched. I'll give them humor points towards having Hitler open the World Series with a girly-ass first pitch and renaming Google "Goebbel."

I am on antidepressants to curb the effects of my high-functioning autism (and they work wonders towards making me not look like a retard). Problem is I have to by law go in to see the doctor after a certain number of prescription refills. We spend like 15 minutes there, and the doctor asks me how everything's going, I say fine, she renews my prescription. All this could be done on the phone, but no. Then I get hit with a $200 copayment for an astronomical office visit bill. I'm stuck paying a shitload of money for luxury crap I don't need, and for what? Because the wealthy and upper middle-class folk don't want to pay more taxes for a publicly-owned clinic system and be slightly less rich? Pff, shitfuckers.

Okay, so I'm doing some research for a paper on Roman attitudes towards homosexuality (don't ask why). One of the links provided on a LGBT history sourcebook brought me to a work by stoic philosopher Seneca called Epistle CXXII: On Darkness as a Veil for Wickedness. In it, he describes what constitutes "natural" and "unnatural" behavior (it's relevant, because he considered homosexuals unnatural for their perceived lechery). While describing people who commit themselves to "the darkness"--behavior that pushes against the natural order--he stated the following:

"When men have begun to desire all things in opposition to the ways of Nature, they end by entirely abandoning the ways of Nature. They cry: 'It is daytime: let us go to sleep! It is the time when men rest: now for exercise, now for our drive, now for our lunch! Lo, the dawn approaches: it is dinner-time! We should not do as mankind do. It is low and mean to live in the usual and conventional way. Let us abandon the ordinary sort of day. Let us have a morning that is a special feature of ours, peculiar to ourselves!' Such men are, in my opinion, as good as dead."

Now, when I read this, I instantly thought of hipsters--that quirky bunch of people who obsess over what the "mainstream" is up to for the sole purpose of acting contrary to what everyone else is doing, that they may obtain a false sense of moral superiority over rejecting "the norm." At least, that's what hipsters look to be doing to me. Can anyone else here kinda see how Seneca inadvertently described hipsters? I laughed out loud when I read that passage.

This guy's posing as different furs to set up furmeets. Be VERY careful who you talk to online. News video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0 If you live in the US, stay alert! He's gotten four or five people already.