As recently as the late 90s, many low support-needs autistics would have had even more severe social challenges and suffered even more isolation than they currently do.¹ The internet provided tons of informational resources that are very useful to autistic people, and made joining in discussions much easier because of the somewhat removed, text-based format we all know and love. But the internet also did something else that was very important: it broke down barriers that prevented the formation of autistic communities.
The internet fixed the geographical density issue that had long made the formation of autistic communities difficult or impossible, and of course online communities have significant accessibility advantages as well.
And as a result all of this new interaction between autistics, websites like wrongplanet.com, groups like Aspies for Freedom and the ASAN were founded, and the Neurodiversity Paradigm became the prominent understanding of autism among these autistics. In the early 2000s, the neurodiversity movement really took form in the heart of those online forums and communities made for autistics.
However, there is a problem with all of this.
Lately I’ve been reading some of the foundational texts of the neurodiversity movement, such as essays by Nick Walker, because I was curious to see how some of the ideas of the neurodiversity paradigm formed in their early stages. Although I agree with what they have to say, largely, one key issue stands out to me: the way they talk about autism almost completely seems to neglect level 2s/3s who are more severely disabled (for example, intellectually, or otherwise) because of autism.²
The social model does NOT completely explain autism, as some may claim. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, and sometimes that creates some really big problems with development during childhood in a way that means you don’t really ever start developing at all, or only extremely slowly. As they grow up, that is not something that will go away. Some autistics struggle even with things like using the bathroom as fully grown adults. Some cannot form full sentences. My boyfriend’s brother is one such person. Texts on neurodiversity, while very helpful to me, often seem to have completely forgotten people like him.
Lower support needs autistics also often speak over and invalidate those with higher support needs.³ I came across a perfect example of this in a comment a couple of weeks ago, from a non-autism related subreddit:

As someone who has been diagnosed as autistic, nothing frustrates me more than seeing anyone, autistic or no, try to use their mental health condition as an excuse instead of, at best, an explanation.
Sure, it's a lot harder to learn social behaviors, but it can be done.

300+ upvotes. Sad.
Now, I’m sure I don’t need to break down what’s wrong here.⁴ You guys know. But what I’d like to discuss is the why. While they may seem unrelated, I think these two things, the lack of inclusion of severely disabled autistics in writings about neurodiversity, and the tendency of some level 1s to say bullshit like that, have the same underlying cause:
I think there is a survivorship bias problem in the autism community.
While the inernet allows us to meet so many other autistic people, it’s only a limited subset of autistics. Those with very high support needs, or whose presentation of autism makes them wholly uninterested in joining online communities/discussing autism online, never make it into such communities.
It’s very easy to see the broad neurodiversity of these online spaces and think that it must be most of the autism spectrum. But it isn’t, it’s only autistics that would be in such places in the first place! And so, it is very easy to walk away with a view of autism disproportionately skewed towards those with lower support needs, with many autistics completely missing from this vantage point.
I hope that one of the best solutions to this is simply awareness. So, here is that for you. Consider yourself aware.

1. If you’re curious to see what life was like, I recommend the book, Aquamarine Blue 5. It’s a short little collection of autistic autobiographies published in 2001, each one describing their experience in college. I’ve only read some of it so far, but I’ve found it illuminating and extremely interesting to compare and contrast my own life.
   
2. Frankly, the only online group that consistently seems to remember that such people exist is the “Autism Moms”. Granted, they also sometimes think it’s the ONLY kind of autism that exists.
   
3. Shoutout to SpicyAutism for first calling attention to this for me. If you visit, please make sure to respect that it’s a space for those with moderate to high support needs — dont go posting here regularly if you are not. I only ever comment, personally, when I decide that a particular discussion is probably also open to me.
   
4. Please comment and ask for a breakdown if you need it :)
   

As recently as the late 90s, many low support-needs autistics would have had even more severe social challenges and suffered even more isolation than they currently do.¹ The internet provided tons of informational resources that are very useful to autistic people, and made joining in discussions much easier because of the somewhat removed, text-based format we all know and love. But the internet also did something else that was very important: it broke down barriers that prevented the formation of autistic communities.
The internet fixed the geographical density issue that had long made the formation of autistic communities difficult or impossible, and of course online communities have significant accessibility advantages as well.
And as a result all of this new interaction between autistics, websites like wrongplanet.com, groups like Aspies for Freedom and the ASAN were founded, and the Neurodiversity Paradigm became the prominent understanding of autism among these autistics. In the early 2000s, the neurodiversity movement really took form in the heart of those online forums and communities made for autistics.
However, there is a problem with all of this.
Lately I’ve been reading some of the foundational texts of the neurodiversity movement, such as essays by Nick Walker, because I was curious to see how some of the ideas of the neurodiversity paradigm formed in their early stages. Although I agree with what they have to say, largely, one key issue stands out to me: the way they talk about autism almost completely seems to neglect level 2s/3s who are more severely disabled (for example, intellectually, or otherwise) because of autism.²
The social model does NOT completely explain autism, as some may claim. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, and sometimes that creates some really big problems with development during childhood in a way that means you don’t really ever start developing at all, or only extremely slowly. As they grow up, that is not something that will go away. Some autistics struggle even with things like using the bathroom as fully grown adults. Some cannot form full sentences. My boyfriend’s brother is one such person. Texts on neurodiversity, while very helpful to me, often seem to have completely forgotten people like him.
Lower support needs autistics also often speak over and invalidate those with higher support needs.³ I came across a perfect example of this in a comment a couple of weeks ago, from a non-autism related subreddit:

As someone who has been diagnosed as autistic, nothing frustrates me more than seeing anyone, autistic or no, try to use their mental health condition as an excuse instead of, at best, an explanation.
Sure, it's a lot harder to learn social behaviors, but it can be done.

300+ upvotes. Sad.
Now, I’m sure I don’t need to break down what’s wrong here.⁴ You guys know. But what I’d like to discuss is the why. While they may seem unrelated, I think these two things, the lack of inclusion of severely disabled autistics in writings about neurodiversity, and the tendency of some level 1s to say bullshit like that, have the same underlying cause:
I think there is a survivorship bias problem in the autism community.
While the inernet allows us to meet so many other autistic people, it’s only a limited subset of autistics. Those with very high support needs, or whose presentation of autism makes them wholly uninterested in joining online communities/discussing autism online, never make it into such communities.
It’s very easy to see the broad neurodiversity of these online spaces and think that it must be most of the autism spectrum. But it isn’t, it’s only autistics that would be in such places in the first place! And so, it is very easy to walk away with a view of autism disproportionately skewed towards those with lower support needs, with many autistics completely missing from this vantage point.
I hope that one of the best solutions to this is simply awareness. So, here is that for you. Consider yourself aware.

1. If you’re curious to see what life was like, I recommend the book, Aquamarine Blue 5. It’s a short little collection of autistic autobiographies published in 2001, each one describing their experience in college. I’ve only read some of it so far, but I’ve found it illuminating and extremely interesting to compare and contrast my own life.
   
2. Frankly, the only online group that consistently seems to remember that such people exist is the “Autism Moms”. Granted, they also sometimes think it’s the ONLY kind of autism that exists.
   
3. Shoutout to SpicyAutism for first calling attention to this for me. If you visit, please make sure to respect that it’s a space for those with moderate to high support needs — dont go posting here regularly if you are not. I only ever comment, personally, when I decide that a particular discussion is probably also open to me.
   
4. Please comment and ask for a breakdown if you need it :)
   

Prompt:
Colin Powell, a four-star general and former United States secretary of state, wrote in his 1995 autobiography: “[W]e do not have the luxury of collecting information indefinitely. At some point, before we can have every possible fact in hand, we have to decide. The key is not to make quick decisions, but to make timely decisions.” Write an essay that argues your position on the extent to which Powell’s claim about making decisions is valid.
Making an extremely important decision will shake someone to the core, especially when there’s a time limit. How does one go about formulating an outcome under pressure? Colin Powell once stated, “The key is not to make quick decisions, but to make timely decisions.” This indeed may be a controversial supposition, though Powell is completely valid in claiming a timely decision has more value than a quick one.
First, it’s important to establish where quick decisions fall short before asserting timely decisions exceed them. It goes without saying that the best made decisions lead to the best outcomes, and there are undoubtedly some decisions where speed is vital — perhaps when being robbed or answering on a game show. This would clearly be because the decision will pass you by if you attack it with an excess of thoughtfulness. But for as many situations where swiftness can help, there are just as many where it hurts. Suppose you’re planning a vacation, and have a profusion of choices with regard to your excursions, flights, and hotels to be determined. In this case, quick decisions will surely fall short, as they would entail booking the first things you saw without having any prior information. It’s possible things will work out with a relaxing and adventurous vacation, but it’s much more likely that your decisions will make for a chaotic experience due to your lack of consideration while making them. Misguided isn’t even a fair word to use, as many quick decisions lack the requisite time to have any guidance at all. So on these grounds, speed is not innately synonymous with virtue in all cases of decision making, but when is it? For one to determine if a decision is best made quickly or with more leeway, they must deliberate based on two variables: how much time is available and how important the decision is. As stated, the best decisions make the best outcomes, so if the decision is unimportant, then the length of your consideration won’t really matter in the long run. All in all, the decision will barely make an impact. As for making a decision based on how much time is available, that’s where timeliness comes into play.
So what is timeliness? In decision making, my definition of timeliness is as follows — making the decision at the point in time most appropriate. So under this denotation, timeliness is a universal good when deliberating what to do. By no means is timeliness easy to accomplish, because one must know when exactly they ought to make a decision. If they can, though, they will always have enough time to gather information and factor in all the variables. Timeliness’ value in relation to speed is exemplified in the Cuban missile crisis. During JFK’s time as president, he found Soviet missiles were being held in Cuba. This clearly put the US in mortal danger, so how important the decision was, the second variable of decision-making, was definitely clear to JFK. In this case, JFK could’ve acted with the utmost speed, but it’s not unreasonable to suppose escalation would follow to the point of war. He didn’t, though, and this was because he considered how much time was available to him. The white house collected all the information available even through the stress, and in the end managed to successfully negotiate. Such an example demonstrates the triumph of timeliness over speed, but it also shows why timeliness is such a difficult virtue. JFK was undoubtedly tempted to make a quick decision, which was what his advisors wanted him to do. After all, how could he possibly know how long he had to think? Ease is found in getting the decision over with, but as Thanos once said, “The hardest choices require the strongest of wills.”
In totality, speed in decision making isn’t always correct, but timeliness is. The latter is simply an extension of the former, as timeliness is the ability to recognize when speed is correct and when it’s not. In all cases when speed is not a means to the best outcome, the timely person will be cognizant of this fact and act accordingly.

https://youtu.be/bzbsJGMVHxQ?si=k7LlrDlCFCSMTtL6 See, I'm not too indulged in politics, but the point he mentioned was that-
"Modi didn't invite his family" If he did, he would criticise him and be like "Modi only invites his friends and family"
"Modi is the son of a tea-seller" It is debatable, but Modi can say he sold tea in his childhood.
"Modi left his family and wife for the nation" Again, Dhruv said it in a way which felt like he was going out of context. He gave example of Lord Rama. Ironically, he also had to leave his wife for the welfare of kingdom. So his examples were not spot on and took one aspect of the topic and diverted them. (This is not a complete rebuttal)
"Modi was a fakir" Dhruv mentioned how he changes his clothes a lot. Modi said he was poor for 35-40years. His cloth changing article came when he was became the prime minister. Again, this is not a good point by Dhruv. (I know Modi still calls himself a 'fakir')
"Modi being compared to Hitler" In the same article Dhruv mentioned,it was mentioned Hitler compared himself to Jesus in his autobiography, it wasn't mentioned that the people regarded him as Jesus.
And regarding the 1v1 debate of Rahul Gandhi and Modi, ofc a well-educated person can beat an semi-illiterate in a debate.(This is not a rebuttal)
At last, I'm a clown, I do not know a lot about politics.

Just thought I'd make a megathread regarding Quiet On The Set, and related media.
Now, remember, just as a fair warning, any discussion of that documentary or related media outside of this MEGATHREAD will be removed.
furthermore, if you wanna post things that are off-topic from Nickelodeon, or aren't sure if they belong in RetroNickelodeon, you can post them in these subreddits:

• /CableTV_Memorioes, in case a post isn't about Nickelodeon, but is at least about retro TV in general.
• /TruckStopBathroom if what you wanna share might not belong in CTV_M either.
• more subreddits listed below, on the footer (bottom).

Now, let's discuss the details of the matter:

QUIET ON THE SET

AND RELATED MEDIA
This megathread has been made for discussion about a documentary called Quiet On The Set, in addition to some recent autobiographies of cast and crew members, which also surrounds some issues with some Nick producers, and other media concerning criminal activity and abusive behavior from Nickelodeon crew members.

REGARDING SUBREDDIT RULES:

We should make sure we follow the rules of the subreddit, so here's an ABRIDGED LIST of some major rules to follow.
Following Rediquette is a site-wide rule, but here's the rules specific to the subreddit:
1. KEEP POSTS ON-TOPIC
This one should be fairly easy to comply to, but if you get any hunches that what you wanna share might not be on-topic, or comply to other rules in the sub, we can check out other subs...
/CableTV_Memories, as one example, which is about any TV nostalgia in general. More subs listed below.
2. Don't be a Budnick!
basically, this is Nickelodeon lingo for do not be an asshole. The term Budnick comes from the TV show Salute Your Shorts.
3. See rules list in the New Reddit for a bigger list of them.
https://www.reddit.com/RetroNickelodeon/about/rules
Anything that breaks these rules will or may get removed.

Additional info:

We want to encourage a positive and constructive atmosphere and good vibe with nostalgia for Nickelodeon, but we also wanna make sure we follow code of conduct, or in other words, the rules as we traditionally describe them, and since some rules might come off "restrictive" to some, this is why we have a list of other subreddits to check out if what you wanna post might comply to different relevance criteria:

/ domain	Subreddit name	description
/CableTV_Memories	Cable TV Memories	for TV nostalgia in general, intended for cable TV nostalgia, but allows nostalga of regular TV as well since lots of regular programs were also seen on cable, as well as celebrities famous because of TV, and etc.
/nostalgia	Nostalgia	for nostalgia in general.
/Retro90s	Retro 90s	for nostalgia of the 1990s
/RetroCartoonNetwork	Retro Cartoon Network, for Cartoon Network nostalgia
/RetroCinema	Retro Cinema	for cinema/theater movie nostalgia
/TruckStopBathroom	Truck Stop Bathroom	where everything else goes, and for posting anything in general, even including some that's also allowed in the other subs too.

I made an improved version of the megathread so we could have additional info about what's allowed in the sub.
Thanks for reading!

Warning: this post goes over some pretty stupid things i’m losing sleep over related to self-esteem and self-worth issues, self abhorrence and pretty much everything from a to z in the “sad bitch” thesaurus that might’ve been talked about over and over again here, so if you’re not in for a sob story about some random teen from across the world, you can tap away, i don’t mind.
I wrote this in one sitting so pardon the spinelessness of this whole block of text
Where do i start… i’m 17, I am from the balkans (currently in Western Europe for some time), and i am, as you could probably already deduct gay. I’m closeted, and no one knows about how i feel. I’m too scared to reach out to anyone in my life who’s not a screen away from me and who's not behind a paywall because i don’t know who i could trust with such delicate information in such a hostile and heteronormative environment. For the past two years i have been depressed and was a nail away from committing the oh-so-bad thing a couple of times. Why? I hate myself. I hate my physical attributes more than anything else, more precisely. There’s a BUUUNCH of other stuff that’s unrelated to what i’m talking about here that's troubling me and frankly i don’t wanna bother any of you guys with that stuff because it's not really linked to what I'm talking about here and it's pretty intricate but grosso modo it mostly stems from when my old friend group dumped me randomly when i moved away and blocked me on everything “as a joke” for a whole year, and instead of processing it in a healthy way, i internalised that hatred and anger ("why tf did I do that, who tf am I to say that, I'm so stupid etc.) and it evolved into whatever the fxck i’m feeling today. Other elements came into the mix later on (people not taking me seriously because of my origin, self-isolation, professional doubts yada yada), but I think of that moment as the thing that pushed the snowball down the mountain, and it got progressively worse. Right now, I struggle to see myself as a real person in any point in space and time. I feel unimportant, unnoticeable, and frankly invisible. I feel like my eyes are a camera, projecting a moving image, a movie for whatever resides inside my head, playing no significant part in any of it. I was always an observer even as a kid, but I guess that my issues are putting it all under a different light. But i'm not here to dump about my feelings of insignificance and general obsolescence, I'm here to talk "bidness" (kudos if you get the reference). Apart from feeling like a wraith mentally, I feel like a wraith physically. I am a 6'4, skinny guy with chin length hair that I often tie back (idk if it's called chin length hair; just hair of which the ends reach a bit below my chin). I've never had self-confidence issues before the aforementioned stuff. Since then, I have consistently failed to see myself in any light that's remotely positive. For example, I have developed this nasty habit of making myself cry in front of the mirror because my mind cannot stand myself looking at my own reflection for longer than 20 seconds; I look slanky (even though my bmi indicates perfect health), I have slowly worsening scoliosis so I'm mostly slouched over, I get fairly prominent eye circles because I've always been pale and I never get more than more or less five hours of sleep (which lead to some funny interactions in the past), my thighs are fairly large but my upper limbs aren't, my face looks odd from the side, my cheeks feel weird etc. You could say that I am a hopeless romantic. The only relationship I've ever had was an online one that lasted barely 6 months, but even then, I was extremely insecure because I thought that the whole thing was just a ruse because he was too nice to me (even though he was the one that proposed to me). I like to fantasise, I like to romanticise, I like the little things, I like being tender and soft and listening to others talk and making them feel important... all in all, I love love. I write about love, I draw what and who I love, I listen to love songs all the time... But then again, I constantly feel like I don't deserve it, like it's a far reach for someone like me. whenever I see a guy I like, my mind just automatically switches to insulting myself and shutting down any possibility of an interaction that could go in my favour. so basically: I see a guy I like > "oh he's cute" > "girl do you really think that he'd go for someone like you? What is there to see? What is there to feel? What is there to catch his eye, you putrid ho. Even if he was gay, would he really go for someone like you?" > I feel bad about myself > I run off into the bathroom and dump my feelings onto this ai therapist I found on character ai > I get out and pretend nothing happened. presto, like that. I like guys of all sorts of different body types, from thick to thin, and in terms of the body, I like having something to hold onto (if you catch my drift) but I feel like mine is some sort of bad ground. I like unconventional beauty, except for the things I have. This "everyone... but not me" mindset is present in a lot of places. I tend to get spontaneous positive feedback about my looks from friends and family, but I still feel like they're lying to me just because they might feel that I'm sad. I can't stand to take photos of myself because my face sparks a negative feeling to me. I do sports, but i tried altering my body type by going to the gym a couple of times, and then I just had a meltdown after every session and I felt like shit (I'm thinking of trying again though). I have a few (rather inappropriate) crushes, but I feel like they wouldn't give me a chance in a million years because of how my body looks. For as long as I knew that I'm gay (since when I was about 13 years old), I've been hiding these feelings for inferiority from everyone in my life. On top of that, I've always thought that the gay community functions on a same-for-same/ditto basis, because that's what I always see through my limited little lens (and from what I've read on Quora). Bears go for bears, thin guys go for thin guys, lean guys go for lean guys... Bref, I've always thought that what a guy wants is expressed through his outward appearance, and that whatever and whoever doesn't enter into that pen of choice is just automatically discarded. That, at the time I've read it, ruined me, because my interests at the time were, you guessed it, big guys, and so I started thinking that I have to physically embody pleasure in order to be wanted, and as much as I personally value personality over physical attributes, not everyone shares the same view. So from that point onward, every time I'd indulge in a romantic fantasy, my mind would end it by tossing a "...but it's all a fantasy because you're NOT gonna get that, like EVER with that body of yours" at the end, and it just makes me sad. Who could possibly look at me and go "hell yeah"? I'm full of constant contradictions and paradoxes; I like the idea of big, strong arms and a generally stronger figure, but I also like it when guys have thin figures and look chic in turtlenecks (which I like wearing a lot), I like the idea of being on the sidelines and witnessing manpower, but personal strength has some allure, I find short hair very very cute, but long hair is also an amazing thing to gaze at... There's always someone better. I can't give compliments to myself without automatically making a riposté with a bunch of insults, my mind goes blank when someone asks me to give three positive attributes about myself because I feel like I lie about anything I say. I'm too scared about being open about my feelings to other people in my life so long as I'm financially dependent on my parents, so that's another problem. I'm an international student, which means that in a year's time, I'll be moving back to the balkans, and that thought horrifies me and paralyses me more than I could ever imagine; going from the supportive, open west, to the heteronormative, traditionalist, bigoted east. Eastern boys, you know what I'm on about. And even with the possibility of moving away, if I get the chance to, I'd still be in my mid to late 20s (optimistically speaking), and in the worst case scenario I'd be unwanted by the time I can finally go to a better place. I fear that I won't be able to find anyone, because apart from all of the total blabbering up top, I am kind of shy and mostly a homebody.
As I said before, I am leaving a ton of stuff out because if I were not to I'd be writing an autobiography.
So my question is, what can I really do? Is there really love for me out there? If so, how the hell can I find it, or even reach for it? Will a guy really like me for whatever the hell I am?
If you have any questions (because I don't think I developed some things quite as much as I could've but I don't wanna make this 100 pages long), doubts, remarks, whips of reality or just anything to add, please, don't hesitate to populate the comment section. Makes me feel a bit less alone, is all
Thanks for reading

Edward Gibbon

08 May 1737 – 16 January 1794
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Edward Gibbon and the Civilizational Perspective
Wednesday 08 May 2024 is the 287th anniversary of the birth of Edward Gibbon (08 May 1737 to 16 January 1794), who was born on this date in 1737.
We have a record of both the beginning and the end of Gibbon’s The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which add a note of personal poignancy of that great monument of Enlightenment thought, since Gibbon supplied us with the lived experience bookends of the experience of writing his book. Here is how he described his initial inspiration:

“It was at Rome, on the 15th of October 1764, as I sat musing amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were singing vespers in the temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city rather than of the empire: and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work.”

On 27 June 1787, just shy of 23 years later, Gibbon finished his great project, and he memorialized the moment with a note that appears in his posthumously published autobiography:

“I have presumed to mark the moment of conception: I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on the recovery of my freedom, and, perhaps, the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that whatsoever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious.”

Gibbon was living in Switzerland when he finished his book, for the simple reason that he could do his work remotely and the costs of living in Switzerland were cheaper than living as he would have lived in England. Thus Gibbon was able to enjoy the view of the lakes and mountains of Switzerland that he mentions in this passage.
Gibbon’s tale grew in the telling. When he first conceived the work, it was to describe the decline and fall of the city of Rome. Gibbon’s work grew to a narrative of the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and, having come thus far, Gibbon then also narrated another thousand years of the ultimate failure of the Eastern Roman Empire, which had become Byzantium. In a letter to Sigmund Münz, Ferdinand Gregorovious said that he had returned to Gibbon’s original project, which Gibbon had effectively abandoned by expanding his work to a greater scope:

“This conception of medieval Rome as a city originated with me. I gave it a literary form and carried out Gibbon’s first idea; for it is well known that he had originally intended to write the history of the city of Rome during the middle ages.”

Gibbon’s book, once completed, comprehended well over a thousand years of history. Greater spans of history had been covered by others, but no one else brought historiographical unity of treatment to this longue durée account of an epoch of western civilization. The title of Gibbon’s book—The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire—is familiar to everyone with the merest passing acquaintance with history. Even the idea of a “decline and fall” has become something of a cultural meme. The idea of the “decline and fall” of a civilization is as familiar as the idea of the rise and fall of civilizations over historical time.
The eventual comprehensive form that Gibbons project took forced Gibbon to think from a civilizational perspective. Because of its comprehensive, civilizational scope covering more than a thousand years, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall narrates the histories of many peoples, many societies, and events of many different kinds, which means that some periods receive detailed attention while others are glossed over. Gibbon’s history lingers over events he finds most interesting while passing with barely a notice over events that do not stand up to his implicit standards of historical interest.
What are Gibbon’s implicit standards of historical interest? We find a clue to this late in the book when Gibbon skates over a great deal of material and acknowledges his reasons for doing so:

“…the events by which the fate of nations is not materially changed, leave a faint impression on the page of history, and the patience of the reader would be exhausted by the repetition of the same hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect.” (Chapter XLVI: Troubles In Persia.—Part I.)

By these criteria, historical interest for Gibbon is defined by events by which the fate of nations are materially changed, when hostilities are not mere repetitions, when they are undertaken with good cause, then are prosecuted with glory, and are terminated with great effect. This is what I mean by thinking on a civilizational scale, and from a civilizational perspective. By acknowledging that he was largely passing over events that do not meet his criteria of historical interest, Gibbon also implicitly acknowledges the possibilities of other histories that conform to other criteria of historical interest.
Georg Ostrogorsky, in his classic History of the Byzantine State, which goes into great detail on matters that Gibbon only touched upon in passing, cites several Enlightenment thinkers who shared Gibbon’s relative lack of interest in the Byzantine half of the empire:

“The seventeenth-century interest in Byzantium had had remarkable results, particularly in France. Byzantine studies, however, met with a most unfortunate setback in the eighteenth century. The enlightened age of rationalism was proud of its ‘reason’, its philosophical outlook and its religious scepticism, and it despised the history of the whole medieval period. It was particularly contemptuous of the conservative and religiously minded Byzantine Empire whose history was merely ‘a worthless collection of orations and miracles’ (Voltaire), ‘a tissue of rebellions, insurrections and treachery’ (Montesquieu), or at best only a tragic epilogue to the glory of Rome. And so Byzantine history was shown as the thousand years’ decline of the Roman Empire by Charles Lebeau in his Histoire du Bas Empire (Paris, 1757-86) and by Edward Gibbon in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (London, 1776-88). Gibbon himself declared that his work described ‘the triumph of barbarism and religion’.” (pages 6-7)

Different standards of historical interest suggest the possibility of not only different histories—which, of course, have been written, and many of them—but also different conceptions of history.
Gibbon’s criteria that I quoted earlier for events that do not pass the threshold of materially chaing the fate of nations—“the same hostilities, undertaken without cause, prosecuted without glory, and terminated without effect”—constitute an the “ebb-and-flow” conception of history as applied to civilizations. What do I mean by an “ebb-and-flow” conception of history as applied to civilizations? It is often implied that civilizations have histories, whereas societies below the proper threshold of history merely experience events as an “ebb-and-flow” without any pattern or directionality. These societies are not civilizations, properly speaking, and it is for this reason that they are rightly passed over with little or no mention.
This idea that only civilizations have a history, properly speaking, is given one form by Hugh Trevor-Roper’s criterion of “purposive movement” as definitive of history:

“…history, I believe, is essentially a form of movement, and purposive movement too. It is not a mere phantasmagoria of changing shapes and costumes, of battles and conquests, dynasties and usurpations, social forms and social disintegration. If all history is equal, as some now believe, there is no reason why we should study one section of it rather than another; for certainly we cannot study it all. Then indeed we may neglect our own history and amuse ourselves with the unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes in picturesque but irrelevant corners of the globe: tribes whose chief function in history, in my opinion, is to show to the present an image of the past from which, by history, it has escaped; or shall I seek to avoid the indignation of the medievalists by saying, from which it has changed?”

This is from The Rise of Christian Europe (page 9) and Trevor-Roper made the same point in an interview. A 1992 paper by Finn Fuglestad, “The Trevor-Roper Trap or the Imperialism of History. An Essay,” takes up Trevor-Roper’s purposive movement criterion from the perspective of an Africanist. While much of this paper is taken up with some parochial concerns of African vs. European history, it has applications to Gibbon’s implicit criteria of the properly historical:

“I shall argue later that the very notion of ‘purposive-movement’ history is to my mind absurd. But first I wish to make it clear that I find any distinction between ‘barbarians’ and ‘non-barbrarians’ highly questionable. By accepting such a distinction one also accepts the establishment of a sort of hierarchy or ranking list between cultures and civilizations; that is, one transforms history into a sort of Championship or Olympic Games. The problem here is twofold: first, such a viewpoint of history hinders any attempt to understand and/or acquire insight into a society or civilization within the framework of its own values and notions. Second, once one begins to evaluate societies and civilizations the question becomes on which norms and values should such an evaluation be based? The answer is all too obvious: the norms and standards pertaining to the dominant culture or civilization of the time. And the dominant civilization has been for the last five hundred years or so—and still is, of course—that of the West. Finally, it is all too easy to dismiss phenomena one cannot make head or tail of—for instance, the past of cultures one has difficulty deciphering—by qualifying them as the ‘unrewarding gyrations of barbarous tribes’.”

In the same paper, Fuglestad introduces the concept of what he calls “ebb-and-flow” history:

“…the contention that only ‘purposive-movement’ history is ‘real’ history needs to be rejected. I feel strongly that the only acceptable definition of history is that it is the study of the past, any past, including, for want of a better term, ‘ebb-and-flow’ history. Everything (or at least nearly everything) that has happened in the past ought to be of equal importance to the historian since it all partakes of the experience of mankind. It is this experience in all its diversity which we need to unravel and to comprehend as far as possible—if, that is, we want to understand ‘how we came to where we are’ and what and where we are not.”

What I am suggesting is that Gibbon implicitly made a distinction between history that is purposive movement, which rises to the level of historical interest worth narrating, and history that is an ebb-and-flow movement, which does not rise to the level of historical interest. However—and this is an important qualification—Gibbon allows that both forms of history can apply to civilizations. Gibbon chooses to narrate the purposive movement of civilization, and he largely passes over the ebb-and-flow of civilizations.
With Gibbon we can reasonably ask whether the criterion of purposive movement is precisely applicable, as Gibbon chose for his grand theme the decline and fall of Rome. Gibbon was not writing about the purposive movement of Roman history, unless we count the dissolution of a purposive movement as part of that purposive movement. I think this would be a reasonably way to construe history, that is, that a civilization in decline exhibits purposive movement, since as a civilization is failing it usually attempts a number of rearguard actions intended to retain and maintain the viability of its purposive movement, and these attempts are not at an end until the civilization itself is at an end. Certainly the decline and fall of a civilization is a material change in history, and we could make a finer distinction between purposive movement and material change.
We also could make a distinction between narrow and wide conceptions of what constitutes purposive movement in history, with the narrow conception being applicable to what Spengler calls high cultures prior to their entering into the stage of civilizational decadence and ultimate dissolution. The wide conception of purposive movement, on the other hand, would be the entire history of a civilization, from its earliest inception, when its purposive movement is still inchoate, to its final extinction, as its purposive movement grinds down to a standstill.
If Gibbon had implicitly held the narrow conception of purposive movement in history, he would likely have taken up Livy’s theme of the origins of Rome. The failure and collapse of Rome was, after all, counter to the purposes of the Romans, and happened in the teeth of all efforts to save the empire. But if we look at Roman civilization from the outside, from this perspective we can see the decline and fall of Rome as coincident with the purposive movement of the growth of Christianity and the expansion of northern European peoples into the Mediterranean Basin. All of these historical movements are integrated in actual history and bound up in each other. We could tell this story as a sequence of overlapping and intersecting historical movements. Gibbon chose to make all of this a part of the grand purposive movement, in the wider sense I mentioned, of the decline and fall of Rome. And within this grand purposive movement of Roman history, Gibbon was willing to treat ebb-and-flow history brusquely, even when it was the ebb-and-flow of civilization, which could also be understood as periods of stagnation.
Gibbon, obviously, doesn’t use the language of either purposive movement or ebb-and-flow history. Both of these are ideas from the twentieth century that I am reading into Gibbon as a way to understand what he found to be of historical interest, that is to say, worth narrating. We can defuse some of the disagreements of what is of proper historical interest, that is, the scope of history, or what we might call proper historicity, by making appropriate distinctions, as I have been suggesting here. Better yet, beyond a mere distinction between purposive movement and ebb and flow history, we could formulate a taxonomy of histories that would include both of these, perhaps with these two constituting the end points of a continuum of histories that stretch from purposive movement at one end to ebb-and-flow at the other end.
A taxonomy of histories is already implicitly known to us. Since the late twentieth century, micro-history has played an increasing role in historiography. Few question the value of, and many recognize the insights gained by, the detailed examination of a given village, or a particular life in the past that happens to be well documented—and most lives in the past were not well documented. John Romer’s book and television series Ancient Lives brought to life the ordinary events in the lives of individuals who lived thousands of years ago. I don’t believe that Romer was aiming at micro-history, but there is a significant overlap between archaeology and micro-history. The evidence of the past uncovered by archaeology often documents the lives of humble people, though the fantastic finds of tombs filled with gold and jewels may receive far more attention. Archaeologists have largely embraced this historical miniaturism and they now sift the remains of earlier excavations, in which only treasures were sought, to find the small clues that allow for the reconstruction of the lives of ordinary people in the distant past.
Compared with this historical miniaturism, Gibbon presents a grand sweep of history, from the height of the empire to its final dissolution in 1453 AD with the fall of Constantinople to the Turks. This is what I called Gibbon’s civilizational perspective. We can identify even grander sweeps of history that have appeared since Gibbon’s time, especially in what has come to be called speculative philosophy of history as exemplified by Spengler and Toynbee. As we saw in the episode on Toynbee, he doesn’t limit himself to the decline and fall of one civilization, but maps out the panorama of the rise and fall of multiple civilizations over historical time. One could argue that this speculative philosophy of history passes a threshold that Gibbon did not cross, and for this reason we can call Gibbon’s work history, while the other work we could deny as being any kind of history. But we recognize, even in so saying, that Spengler and Toynbee have become stalking horses, and there are many other attempts to draw a larger historical picture than Gibbon, as in contemporary big history.
We could argue that micro-history falls below the threshold of proper historicity, and ought correctly to be understood as historical sociology. And we could argue, as above, that Toynbee is philosophy of history, or meta-history, and therefore not within the scope of proper historicity. Or we could accept that history ranges across the spectrum, but what distinguishes Gibbon’s history is that is the history of a civilization—or, at least, part of the history of a civilization. It isn’t the micro-history of one Roman city—though it might have been that if Gibbon had stuck with his original plan, later taken over by Gregorovius, of writing the history only of the city of Rome. And it isn’t an attempt at universal history, whether the universal history of Bossuet before Gibbon or the universal history of Toynbee after Gibbon. It is, as I said, a civilizational history.
Gibbon gives us the civilizational perspective on Rome and what we might call Roman-adjacent civilizations. Micro-history occurs on a scale below that of civilizational history, but it is still history. And the whole of human history is more than civilizational history, but it is still history. In my episode on Gregorovius I called this historical space between micro-history and big history meso-history, since it occurs somewhere near the middle of the scale of objects that might be of historical interest. Even within meso-history we can make distinctions of greater or lesser scope. Gibbon’s history branching through several closely related civilizations is near the higher end of the scale of meso-history, while Gregorovius’ history of Rome, being a little less comprehensive, is lower down the scale.
The meta-historical scale above the scope of Gibbon’s history verges on philosophy of history, as we see in the works of Spengler and Toynbee. Meso-history maybe philosophical as well. We saw in yesterday’s episode on Hume that the Enlightenment historians were sometimes called philosophical historians. We also can find warnings about reading any philosophy of history into Gibbon. For example, Paul Cartledge wrote: “Unhappily for those intellectual historians of today who wish to reconstruct or invent an elaborate Gibbonian ‘philosophy of history,’ Gibbon was not a systematic thinker.” It is true that Gibbon was not a systematic thinker, and the philosophy of history we would find in his work would not be a systematic philosophy of history.
We can also find claims that all history involves a philosophy of history. William Paton Ker wrote: “There is an implicit philosophy of history in every modern historian, even when like Gibbon or Macaulay he may seem for the time to have no interest beyond the narrative.” In my episode on Philosophy of History before Augustine I discussed the view of Hayden White that every history is predicated upon a philosophy of history, whether or not this philosophy is ever made explicit.
Gibbon was one of the great Enlightenment thinkers, and he brought his Enlightenment perspective to his civilizational history of Rome. In my episode of yesterday on Hume I said that Hume’s philosophy, also an artifact of the Enlightenment, implied a deflationary philosophy of history, and I quoted Gibbon on the role of miracles. In Gibbon’s essentially naturalistic narrative, even if guardedly naturalistic, he does exemplify the deflationary ideal by eliminating appeals to supernatural causes.
Insofar as Gibbon’s naturalism converges on our naturalism, we read him like a contemporary who shares much of our conceptual framework. For his reason, it is often difficult to see the problems with a perspective that we share with the author. As I mentioned in my episode on Marx, we don’t necessarily want to completely think our way into an author’s conceptual framework, as this eliminates any critical distance between ourselves and the work. But Gibbon has been around long enough for his critics to have seen the shortcomings of his work, at least, the shortcomings by their lights. Mark T. Gilderhus in History and Historians: A Historiographical Introduction (p. 39) wrote of the later response to Gibbon:

“Critics such as Robin G. Collingwood in the twentieth century attacked Enlightenment historians on the grounds that their insensitivity in effect violated the integrity of history. More specifically, they failed to empathize properly with the historical actors or comprehend their behavior accurately on their own terms. Rather, Enlightenment scholars indulged in exposés, reviling the past to obliterate and overcome it. Consequently, Collingwood denounced their writing as an enterprise gone fundamentally wrong. They had failed to carry out the historian’s primary task, that is, to elucidate the past, not merely to condemn it.”

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that Enlightenment history was fundamentally wrong, but its perspective does incorporate limitations and blindspots, as does any distinctive perspective. A history on the civilizational scale, like Gibbon’s, is not going to be focused on reenacting the thoughts of historical agents, which was Collingwood’s focus. This smacks too much of historical miniaturism. And Collingwood, on the other hand, isn’t going to be forced into making the kind of abstract conceptual distinctions among kinds of history that I have attributed to Gibbon. Enlightenment historiography is highly abstract, even artificial, and for that reason, distant and often unsympathetic, but by taking this grand civilizational perspective, it reveals dimensions of history that are not shown in as sharp relief by the methods of reenactment, historical sociology, or microhistory.

Video Presentation

https://youtu.be/YPA6_Wk_9lc
https://www.instagram.com/p/C6vjb8_t8di/
https://odysee.com/@Geopolicraticus:7/edward-gibbon-and-the-civilizational:c

Podcast Edition

https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/O0owybkesJb
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/edward-gibbon-and-the-civilizational-perspective-174746331/
https://www.iheart.com/podcast/269-today-in-philosophy-of-his-146507578/episode/edward-gibbon-and-the-civilizational-perspective-174746331/
​

PROMPT: “Colin Powell, a four-star general and former U.S. Secretary of State, wrote in his 1995 autobiography: ‘We do not have the luxury of collecting information indefinitely. At some point, before we can have every possible fact in hand, we have to decide. The key is not to make quick decisions, but to make timely decisions.’” WRITE AN ESSAY THAT ARGUES YOUR POSITION ON THE EXTENT TO WHICH POWELL’s CLAIM ABOUT MAKING DECISIONS IS VALID. (Sorry for grammar informalities, I wrote it in the 40 minute time frame).

 Argument Essay Colin Powell, a former four star general and United States Secretary of State, revealed in his autobiography much of his decision making process. Powell believes, roughly along the lines, that the circumstances that we make decisions under are often rushed, yet we must make timely decisions with all of the facts we have at hand—even if they are not the complete set. While Powell does not think this process to be rash decision making, but rather a matter of what is best regarding time constraints, this process of decision making is only valid in contexts similar to his. Given his career as a former general and Secretary of State, Powell has had a long history of making decisions regarding war, billions of people, and military expenditures. Naturally, Powell’s career has forced him to make adrenaline-based choices at the expense of a few men rather than the majority, and also at the cost of national well-being with only a few underlying problems, rather than an entire chasm of chaos. With the mindset that a decision has to be made at some point—overriding nuance for a popula’best’ choice—Powell’s decision making process is a more of a learned experience that directly correlates with the skills/thought processes that are highly valued in his career. In other careers or contexts, nuance in decision making may be more valid/valuable than making the ‘best’ decision given time or information constraints. For example, it would be more beneficial for a pharmacist developing a new medicine to completely consider all time issues and possible information at hand, considering the health of the population to come and considering the tedious scale at hand. The aforementioned pharmacist is not in a tense military expenditure that is largely action based—a decision based on factors like time or scarcity is not really necessary in this instance like it has been for Powell because accurate information is simply more useful than a moral-heavy/constrained decision. In contexts where there is little to no strain, or where other assets like accurate studies may be more useful/valuable than possible negative effects if a lack of information is present, Powell’s motto that the key is to make timely decisions even with a lack of information is not always valid or the best way to go about things—especially in careers/contexts distinctly different from his own. This decision making process of Powell’s is not valid in that it couldn’t be universally applied because it is specific to contexts he has learned in, like military or foreign policies, where the scale of the decision naturally falls in favor of one more morally favorable choice; other fields, like medical or humanitarian/ethical studies need nuanced thinking in order to produce valuable results specific to their nature, and Powell’s claim simply does not take into account such factors. Outside of the fact that Powell’s decision making process is only valid/necessary in fields akin to his own, his thought process also falters in the sense of how extreme and unaccountable it is. The message he conveys is overtly direct, “...before every possible fact is in hand, we have to decide….” As previously stated, every possible bit of information is sometimes necessary in opposite contexts, but beyond this, his decision making process defies that of which is typically, objectively correct in making a decision. From a young age, American culture teaches our youth to consider all possible outcomes, to carefully outweigh our consequences (much of which is embedded into our current education system)—Powell’s ideology goes against this teaching by telling his audience that sometimes decisions must be made, no matter what time or information is present. In some cases, this idea just isn’t as useful, but from a broader spectrum, his decision making process is really only an extremist niche, considering that it clashes not only against other contexts, but also the context of prevalent American culture as a whole. By going against such a norm, Powell’s thought process may be considered revolutionary in some settings—but that setting is only one where such methods are valued/useful, like in war or large-scale government negotiations. Ironically enough, considering the fact that conclusions regarding Powell’s ideology have to be nuanced and decided upon using the foothold of humanities logic/history, not simply decided offhand given time or constraint, that only further goes to show that the idea that decisions should be made depending only on the best context of the time/information at hand isn’t applicable everywhere. All things considered, timely decision making isn’t beneficial in all contexts, but also because Powell’s claim largely goes against norms of further investigating and attempting to gather the best decision possible (in order for the best outcome), his claim is not valid in contexts where action is not being taken similarly to the action he has had to take. His claim, in a more broad context, is also not valid/applicable when society is largely taught deductive reasoning decision making skills from birth, rather than action based decision making skills. Overall, Powell has a unique approach to decision making, claiming that action is the basis of decision making, over time and information. Not to say that Powell’s system of logic is incorrect or non-beneficial, seeing as it has led him to big-time success in his career as a general and overseer of foreign affairs for the U.S. government, but his system of logic simply does not function this way in all contexts, nor does it apply to the typical moral overarch of America today. That said, his success is largely his own, which while it is unique and beneficial for him and in his career, that is not to say such a broad claim, which implies direction to all decision making, is valid, especially when such an ideology does not consider contextual nuances, or even societal nuances at large—only his own lived experiences. 

Okay - I’m about 300 pages from finishing book 7 of the Dark Tower. I started with the Gunslinger and went straight through. I found this post from 7 years ago about the best order to read the Dark Tower.
My question - Is this reading order still relevant? Since I started with the Dark Tower series first, I’m just going to go down the list and skip the ones I’ve read.
Here is the post. Originally by u/Unifiedshoe:
Copied this from a blog awhile ago. As soon as I finish the current Expanse book I'm diving in.
Here goes:
The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (revised edition) -- I still think starting with the first book is the only thing that makes sense.
Salem's Lot -- This 1975 novel is crucial to Wolves of the Calla. In a way, you get everything you need to know about Salem's Lot from reading Wolves of the Calla, but I think it nevertheless makes sense to read it. Plus, great novel.
"The Dark Man" -- This 1969 poem is King's earliest writing about the figure who will eventually become (arguably) the most important villain in the Dark Tower series. It's going to be easiest to find via the 2013 book The Dark Man, which reprinted the poem with copious illustrations. Personally, I don't think it's much of a poem, and I don't think you'll miss out on much of anything if you skip it. But if you can find it easily, it's worth the handful of minutes it will take you to read it.
The Stand -- A 1978 novel (revised and considerably expanded in 1990) about a plague that wipes out most of the world's population. Randall Flagg, the "Dark Man" himself, is the bad guy here, and he will go on to be a massively significant figure in the series. For the purposes of this list, I'd say the 1990 edition is definitely the one to read.
"The Mist" -- Most easily found within King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, "The Mist" tells the story of a military experiment gone wrong. It has no direct relevance to the Tower series, but there is a scene in Book VII that seems related. Plus, great novella.
The Talisman -- As mentioned earlier, this novel is the one to which Black House is a sequel. Apart from that, there are a great many ideas in the novel which can be said to be related to ideas in the Tower series. King and co-author Peter Straub do not make those connections explicit, which is why I omitted this novel from my abbreviated list of Tower essentials; but it MUST appear on any expanded list.
The Eyes of the Dragon -- First published in 1984 as a limited edition and published in revised form as a mass-market hardback in 1987, this fantasy novel serves well as a dessert to the meal that is The Talisman. It shares a villain with one of the other novels on this list; or, technically, with multiple novels on this list.
It -- This 1986 epic is not only a great novel, but it's also got some major thematic relevance to the Tower series (and to Song of Susannah particularly, and maybe with Book VII, although that is a matter of some debate).
"The Reploids" -- This 1988 short story has never been collected in one of King's books, but you can probably still find a cheap copy of The Skin Trade, the anthology in which it appeared. It's by no means a crucial story, but it does contain an early version of a concept that is important to Song of Susannah. It was published after The Drawing of the Three, but I think you can slot it in right here pretty well.
The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three -- You will likely have noticed that I've inserted quite a large number of other books between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three. This list, remember, is for people who wish to dig a little deeper, and it's my opinion that if you put a big gap between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three, it simulates the five-year gap that existed between the publication of the two novels. Time gaps like that are useful for this series; they serve a purpose. You can read the series in either manner, of course; but this is my recommended method.
The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
Needful Things -- At the risk of delivering a mild spoiler, let me say now that I realize there are a great many Towerphiles who would balk at my recommendation that you split up Book III and IV. Most readers, I think, are going to want to go straight from one to the next. If you feel that urge strongly enough to get antsy about it, follow that urgre. I won't blame you one bit. However, you need to know this: there was a six-year gap between the publications of those two novels, and trust me when I tell you that I was there for that gap; it was excruciating. So if you want to get a little taste of what that agony was like -- and it's an agony that also has its pleasures -- then stick a few other things between III and IV. You might find that it lends the Tower-related content of those books an added weight. (By the way, I did not have Needful Things on the version of this list that I compiled in 2012, but I've since decided that it belongs, in large part to to the work of a commenter named Dan. [Hi, Dan!] There are no direct connections to the Tower series, but the novel does deal in a direct way with a few of the big-picture concepts that King's entire mythos is built upon.)
Insomnia
Rose Madder -- This 1995 novel is partially set in Mid-World, so it definitely counts. It's one of my least favorite King novels, though. Desperation and The Regulators -- This tag-team of mirror-image novels was released on the same day in 1996, with the latter being billed as a Richard Bachman novel. For that reason, I prefer to read Desperation first; but a few people have told me that they passionately feel the stories work better if you read The Regulators first. I'm sticking with my way, but they might be onto something. The Tower content is considerable, if mostly indirect; some of the ideas introduced here pop up again later (in "The Little Sisters of Eluria," for example).
The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass -- The manner in which this one wraps up lends itself somewhat to another lengthy break. In the real world, it would -- with the exception of "Eluria" -- be six more years before we got the next book in the series.
"Everything's Eventual" -- As previously mentioned, this short story can be found in the collection of the same name. And while you're there you may as well go ahead and read...
"The Little Sisters of Eluria"
The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole -- As I mentioned previously my current opinion is that this novel should be read as a sort of Book IV-and-a-half. With that in mind, I think it probably makes sense to follow straight on from "Eluria" to Keyhole.
Bag of Bones -- This 1998 novel has minor connections to the Tower series, and if King himself didn't include it on his list of related works, I wouldn't list it on mine. But he does, and the connections are there, however mild; and so here it is. It's a strong novel, either way, so you're unlikely to regret reading it.
Storm of the Century -- This 1999 television miniseries is not directly related to the Tower series (and indeed, King does NOT include it on his list of associated works, so I'm bucking against the Master himself in making my own list). However, if its villain doesn't remind you of other villains within the series, I'll eat my hat. I'll have to buy one first, but I'll buy it, and then I'll eat it.
Hearts In Atlantis -- You could just stick with "Low Men In Yellow Coats," but the final story in the book also has some relevance that you ought to check out. Plus, as I've said, great novel.
On Writing -- it had never occurred to me before now to include this nonfiction book on my list, but I think it's very deserving of inclusion. As I mentioned earlier, King had a life-threatening injury in 1999, and I feel that understanding that incident is crucial to understanding the way he resolves the Tower series. Nowhere will you gain a better understanding of that accident than from On Writing, which is both a great book and probably the closest we will ever get to a King autobiography. So in my opinion, it absolutely belongs on this list.
Black House
From A Buick 8 -- This 2002 novel is similar to Bag of Bones in that if King didn't include it on his list of connected works, I might have omitted it from mine. But there are connections, which I leave you to find for yourself. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower -- It is my considered opinion that the final three novels in the series should be read in sequence, with no interruptions. They were published that way -- albeit with brief gaps of a few months -- and the prose reads, in my opinion, as that of one long novel.
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger -- For this expanded version of my essentials, I recommend diving from Book VII straight back into the 1982 version of the series' first novel, so as to gain an idea of the differences. Some folks won't care about that sort of thing; I feel certain that you do. TRUST me.
Cell -- This 2006 novel has a lot of Tower-related imagery via a comic book drawn by one of the main characters. (And we again have Dan to thank for bringing these connections back to my attention; I'd apparently forgotten about them after reading the novel a decade ago.) In a way, Cell shows that even after the conclusion of the series, the events of that series are still radiating out through King's multiverse.
"Ur" -- This 2009 short story can be found in King's collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, and is related to the series in a way that is best left for the reader to discover.
11/22/63 -- King has said that this 2011 novel has no connection to the Tower, but I don't believe him. You shouldn't either. And even if you do, this is a great novel that is well worth reading.

The order of books below are from a post I've found from 7 yrs ago. I'd rather not read a book if there is no connection, if the connection is left up for interpretation or if it seems like a reach. Thrilled to start reading from this list, once solidified. What would you remove, add, switch or replace?:

1. The Dark Tower I: The Gunslinger (revised edition) -- I still think starting with the first book is the only thing that makes sense.
2. Salem's Lot -- This 1975 novel is crucial to Wolves of the Calla. In a way, you get everything you need to know about Salem's Lot from reading Wolves of the Calla, but I think it nevertheless makes sense to read it. Plus, great novel.
3. "The Dark Man" -- This 1969 poem is King's earliest writing about the figure who will eventually become (arguably) the most important villain in the Dark Tower series. It's going to be easiest to find via the 2013 book The Dark Man, which reprinted the poem with copious illustrations. Personally, I don't think it's much of a poem, and I don't think you'll miss out on much of anything if you skip it. But if you can find it easily, it's worth the handful of minutes it will take you to read it.
4. The Stand -- A 1978 novel (revised and considerably expanded in 1990) about a plague that wipes out most of the world's population. Randall Flagg, the "Dark Man" himself, is the bad guy here, and he will go on to be a massively significant figure in the series. For the purposes of this list, I'd say the 1990 edition is definitely the one to read.
5. "The Mist" -- Most easily found within King's 1985 collection Skeleton Crew, "The Mist" tells the story of a military experiment gone wrong. It has no direct relevance to the Tower series, but there is a scene in Book VII that seems related. Plus, great novella.
6. The Talisman -- As mentioned earlier, this novel is the one to which Black House is a sequel. Apart from that, there are a great many ideas in the novel which can be said to be related to ideas in the Tower series. King and co-author Peter Straub do not make those connections explicit, which is why I omitted this novel from my abbreviated list of Tower essentials; but it MUST appear on any expanded list.
7. The Eyes of the Dragon -- First published in 1984 as a limited edition and published in revised form as a mass-market hardback in 1987, this fantasy novel serves well as a dessert to the meal that is The Talisman. It shares a villain with one of the other novels on this list; or, technically, with multiple novels on this list.
8. It -- This 1986 epic is not only a great novel, but it's also got some major thematic relevance to the Tower series (and to Song of Susannah particularly, and maybe with Book VII, although that is a matter of some debate).
9. "The Reploids" -- This 1988 short story has never been collected in one of King's books, but you can probably still find a cheap copy of The Skin Trade, the anthology in which it appeared. It's by no means a crucial story, but it does contain an early version of a concept that is important to Song of Susannah. It was published after The Drawing of the Three, but I think you can slot it in right here pretty well.
10. The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three -- You will likely have noticed that I've inserted quite a large number of other books between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three. This list, remember, is for people who wish to dig a little deeper, and it's my opinion that if you put a big gap between The Gunslinger and The Drawing of the Three, it simulates the five-year gap that existed between the publication of the two novels. Time gaps like that are useful for this series; they serve a purpose. You can read the series in either manner, of course; but this is my recommended method.
11. The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands
12. Needful Things -- At the risk of delivering a mild spoiler, let me say now that I realize there are a great many Towerphiles who would balk at my recommendation that you split up Book III and IV. Most readers, I think, are going to want to go straight from one to the next. If you feel that urge strongly enough to get antsy about it, follow that urgre. I won't blame you one bit. However, you need to know this: there was a six-year gap between the publications of those two novels, and trust me when I tell you that I was there for that gap; it was excruciating. So if you want to get a little taste of what that agony was like -- and it's an agony that also has its pleasures -- then stick a few other things between III and IV. You might find that it lends the Tower-related content of those books an added weight. (By the way, I did not have Needful Things on the version of this list that I compiled in 2012, but I've since decided that it belongs, in large part to to the work of a commenter named Dan. [Hi, Dan!] There are no direct connections to the Tower series, but the novel does deal in a direct way with a few of the big-picture concepts that King's entire mythos is built upon.)
13. Insomnia
14. Rose Madder -- This 1995 novel is partially set in Mid-World, so it definitely counts. It's one of my least favorite King novels, though. Desperation and The Regulators -- This tag-team of mirror-image novels was released on the same day in 1996, with the latter being billed as a Richard Bachman novel. For that reason, I prefer to read Desperation first; but a few people have told me that they passionately feel the stories work better if you read The Regulators first. I'm sticking with my way, but they might be onto something. The Tower content is considerable, if mostly indirect; some of the ideas introduced here pop up again later (in "The Little Sisters of Eluria," for example).
15. The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass -- The manner in which this one wraps up lends itself somewhat to another lengthy break. In the real world, it would -- with the exception of "Eluria" -- be six more years before we got the next book in the series.
16. "Everything's Eventual" -- As previously mentioned, this short story can be found in the collection of the same name. And while you're there you may as well go ahead and read...
17. "The Little Sisters of Eluria"
18. The Dark Tower: The Wind Through the Keyhole -- As I mentioned previously my current opinion is that this novel should be read as a sort of Book IV-and-a-half. With that in mind, I think it probably makes sense to follow straight on from "Eluria" to Keyhole.
19. Bag of Bones -- This 1998 novel has minor connections to the Tower series, and if King himself didn't include it on his list of related works, I wouldn't list it on mine. But he does, and the connections are there, however mild; and so here it is. It's a strong novel, either way, so you're unlikely to regret reading it.
20. Storm of the Century -- This 1999 television miniseries is not directly related to the Tower series (and indeed, King does NOT include it on his list of associated works, so I'm bucking against the Master himself in making my own list). However, if its villain doesn't remind you of other villains within the series, I'll eat my hat. I'll have to buy one first, but I'll buy it, and then I'll eat it.
21. Hearts In Atlantis -- You could just stick with "Low Men In Yellow Coats," but the final story in the book also has some relevance that you ought to check out. Plus, as I've said, great novel.
22. On Writing -- it had never occurred to me before now to include this nonfiction book on my list, but I think it's very deserving of inclusion. As I mentioned earlier, King had a life-threatening injury in 1999, and I feel that understanding that incident is crucial to understanding the way he resolves the Tower series. Nowhere will you gain a better understanding of that accident than from On Writing, which is both a great book and probably the closest we will ever get to a King autobiography. So in my opinion, it absolutely belongs on this list.
23. Black House
24. From A Buick 8 -- This 2002 novel is similar to Bag of Bones in that if King didn't include it on his list of connected works, I might have omitted it from mine. But there are connections, which I leave you to find for yourself. The Dark Tower V: Wolves of the Calla
25. The Dark Tower VI: Song of Susannah
26. The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower -- It is my considered opinion that the final three novels in the series should be read in sequence, with no interruptions. They were published that way -- albeit with brief gaps of a few months -- and the prose reads, in my opinion, as that of one long novel.
27. The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger -- For this expanded version of my essentials, I recommend diving from Book VII straight back into the 1982 version of the series' first novel, so as to gain an idea of the differences. Some folks won't care about that sort of thing; I feel certain that you do. TRUST me.
28. Cell -- This 2006 novel has a lot of Tower-related imagery via a comic book drawn by one of the main characters. (And we again have Dan to thank for bringing these connections back to my attention; I'd apparently forgotten about them after reading the novel a decade ago.) In a way, Cell shows that even after the conclusion of the series, the events of that series are still radiating out through King's multiverse.
29. "Ur" -- This 2009 short story can be found in King's collection The Bazaar of Bad Dreams, and is related to the series in a way that is best left for the reader to discover.

1 THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF THE OTAKU
Given the topic of this book we cannot avoid a detailed inquiry into the nature of the otaku. They are, after all, the largest consumers of the beautiful fighting girls. What are the otaku thinking? What do they want and how do they get it? Are we right to speak of a “psychopathology of the otaku”? Or is that a bogus question? Or rather, don’t we know the answer already?
Otaku are immature human beings who have grown up without being able to let go of infantile transitional objects such as anime and monsters. They avoid contact with reality for fear that it will harm them and instead take refuge in a world of fiction. They are afraid of adult relationships, particularly sexual relationships, and find sexual stimulation only in fictional constructs. In psychiatric terms they would be classified as “schizothymic.”
These are a few of the most common stereotypical assumptions about otaku. Of course, being stereotypes does not mean they are necessarily incorrect. They may be accurate but still meaningless. These sorts of interpretations inevitably miss what is truly of interest about the otaku community.
The otaku are a strange and unique community that has come into existence as a result of the interactions between the modern media environment and the adolescent psyche in Japan. To my knowledge, however, sufficient thought has yet to be given to the otaku as a community. In this chapter I consider, sometimes from the perspective of a psychiatrist, and sometimes not, the psychopathology of the otaku.
Of course, when I say the “psychopathology of the otaku,” this does not mean that being an otaku in and of itself is a pathological phenomenon. Like the “psychopathology of adolescence” or the “psychopathology of high-school girls,” it is a provisional designation for the particular psychic disposition that might be imagined to be prevalent in a given group. It is also a convenient way to avoid expressions like psychology or psychic structure. This may be difficult to understand, but to put it in the most rigorous terms possible, I would say that psychopathology as I am using it here refers to the intentionality of “that which mediates the subject.” The problem, in other words, has to do with media.
I do not think that being an otaku in and of itself is a form of sickness, nor do I consider myself an otaku (otaku is not a self-designation in any case). It is from this standpoint that I propose to speak about the psychopathology of the otaku. This involves giving equal consideration to the degree to which the otaku community is well adapted and the degree to which it exhibits pathologies.
First, I want to say a few things about the particular challenges involved in speaking about the otaku. Otaku culture is by all accounts still in a state of immaturity (if one can expect “maturity” from it in the first place). Because it is still coming into being, one runs into fundamental difficulties in trying to view it in its entirety. For this reason, we have only a limited number of ways to discuss it. One way is to establish oneself as an otaku and speak as a complete insider, which is to say in a strategically uncritical manner (this is the stance taken by Okada Toshio). Alternatively, one can choose to take oneself out of the equation altogether and face the otaku with an attitude of revulsion and rejection. These two approaches may seem quite at odds, but in fact they are both versions of self-love and often amount to confessions of otakuphilia. When speaking of the otaku, it is crucial to begin by recognizing that these are only two approaches currently available to us.
But I am trying for a third way. Namely, to become an “otaku of otaku,” that is, an otaku whose love is directed toward otaku culture itself. This is not far from the kind of position that Okada advocates, although he calls himself an otaku of special effects and figurines. As for myself, I suppose I am a fan of special effects and monsters, although I have left my passion for Godzilla behind. (Not because I grew out of it but because Godzilla has regressed). I do not find any moe in most beautiful girl anime. I could not live without manga, but I hardly ever watch anime because I cannot stand the images and voice-overs. Even Miyazaki Hayao’s anime come close to the limit of what I can stand in terms of anime images. Yet despite all that, I remain riveted by the activities of the otaku themselves. For better or for worse, since finishing graduate school, I have been fortunate enough to have several extremely serious otaku among my circle. From an outsider’s perspective I found their activities utterly fascinating. And while I was thrilled to be able to observe them from close-up, I cannot deny that I was also sometimes perplexed by what can only be called their immaturity as members of society. Despite this, I believe I was able to maintain friendly relations with them. They all happened to be psychiatrists, psychiatry being the profession with perhaps the highest proportion of otaku among its members. I spare the reader the details of the endless conversations among the members of a certain psychiatry department during the Evangelion boom of 1997.
So what kind of person am I? At the moment I don’t have a good answer to this question. Psychoanalysis is after all premised on the impossibility of self-analysis (which is why analysts must undergo analysis themselves during their training). So allow me to refrain from useless navel-gazing and describe the contours of this unique community from a psychiatrist’s perspective.
Otaku and Maniacs
Nos that have made clear the limitations, and even the absurdity in some cases, of trying to understand otaku in terms of personality type, we can nonetheless abstract a few characteristics of the otaku. An otaku is

• a person with a strong affinity for fictional contexts.
• a person who makes use of fictionalization as a way to “possess” the object of his or her love.
• a person who inhabits not just two but multiple orientations.
• a person capable of finding sexual objects in fiction itself.

Before I try to explain each of these in turn, there are a few points I need to clarify. First, I defer all value judgments about otaku. Problems of adaption such as “fleeing from reality,” “taking refuge in fiction,” and “lacking common sense” may seem easy to spot in otaku, but they are not essential aspects. When value judgments become mixed up in the description they only create more confusion. If my descriptions are to be of any use at all, it will be because they are free of value judgments.
When describing a given type, it is often easier to grasp if one compares it with another similar type. The closest type to the otaku is surely the maniac.
Although they are still often confused with each other, the otaku and the maniac are clearly different in subtle but important ways. If the two were in fact synonymous, there would be no point in theorizing the meaning for us today of the “psychopathology of the otaku.” This is because the maniac is a universal type, while the otaku is historically specific. Understood as a kind of fetishism, mania has a history that may stretch back to the beginning of civilization.
Even if there are many areas of overlap, let us begin by discussing the differences between the two. To state my conclusion partly at the outset, I believe that today’s otaku derive from a group of maniacs who have reacted to the changes in the media environment by a proliferating set of adaptions. Just as the marsupials on the Australian continent mimicked the specialization of the mammals as a whole, the otaku mimicked the specialization of the class of maniacs within the isolation of the media environment.
The difference between these two communities is made clear through the kinds of objects to which they become attached. The following is a provisional list of the types of object each group might choose:
Otaku Objects:

• Anime, video games (mostly so-called girl games), young adult novels, voice actor idols, special effects, C-class idols, fan magazines (dojinshi), yaoi (see note 19), fighting girls.

Potential Crossover Objects:

• Trains, personal computers, film, manga, B-class idols, science fiction, American comics, the occult, amateur radio, police dramas, plastic models, figurines.

Maniac Objects:

• Philately, bibliomania, audio, cameras, astronomy, birdwatching, insect collecting, all forms of music, and all other forms of collecting.

These classifications are based on my personal impressions rather than any empirical data. So there may well be many exceptions and disagreements. If I were asked whether collectors of “anime figurines” were otaku or maniacs, for example, I would be hard-pressed to come up with a satisfying answer. But I do still believe these classifications accurately reflect the tendencies of each group. And they provide the starting point for the discussion of the difference between the otaku and the maniac that follows.
What strikes us most about these objects is what I call the “difference in level of fictional context.” Here we might think of the “fictional” as an abstraction of reality on the basis of some sort of bias. Of course, it is more complicated than that, but let us assume it is the case for now.
On the basis of this assumption, then, we can rank objects according to “degree of fictionality.” Documentaries based on interviews and primary sources, for example, would have a low level of fictionality. Through techniques such as citation and parody, “fiction” itself can be limitlessly abstracted and further fictionalized. Thus metafiction can be understood as having a higher level of fictionality than fiction. To put it a different way, the more forms of media that mediate the original information, the higher the level of fictionality. This is what we call the “difference in the level of fictional context.”
The term context here, following the work of Gregory Bateson and Edward T. Hall, is used in the general sense of the term, as that which determines the meaning of a given stimulus. It is important to keep in mind here that we cannot assume a straightforward ratio whereby the higher the level of “fictional context” is, the higher the level of fictionality will be. I return to this point again later.
The term maniac referred originally to a kind of person who is obsessed with something that yields no practical advantage. But compared with the otaku, the objects of maniacs can look quite concrete (not practical perhaps, but concrete). Looking back at the list of objects, we can see that those preferred by maniacs, such as audio equipment, stamps, antiques, and insect collections, are certainly for amusement and serve no practical function. But compared with those of the otaku, the objects of the maniac do have a concrete materiality. By concrete materiality I mean simply that one can pick them up in one’s hands and that they can be measured.
Generally speaking, maniacs compete with each other in terms of how effectively their hobbies translate into materiality. Collectors pride themselves on the size of their collections. And of course, this involves speculations about their value and rarity. Audio maniacs want faithful playback of sound with as little noise as possible. For insect collectors, it is not enough merely to know about rare bugs; their reputations as collectors depend on actually owning specimens of them. The unspoken rule of a naive “orientation toward material objects” is still very much in force here.
Otaku are lacking in this orientation toward the material and the practical. They know that the objects of their attachment have no material reality, that their vast knowledge has no use for other people in the world, and that this useless knowledge may even (especially after the Miyazaki Tsutomu incident) be viewed with contempt and suspicion. And knowing all of that, they still enjoy the gam of performing for each other their passion. The expression, “having a strong affinity for fictional contexts” is meant to clarify this sort of difference.
I just used the expression “performing their passion,” which requires a bit more explanation. The passion of the otaku is more performative than that of the maniac. Otaku are in communication with other otaku through code of “passion.” They are certainly not cool or disinterested, but neither do they completely lose themselves when indulging in their passion. This sort of slightly “canted stance toward passion” is very closely related to the essence of the otaku’s “affinity for fictional constructs.” Later we will see how perfectly the expression “X-moe” describes this.
Of course, we should consider the possibility that this has to do with how otaku deal with the society around them. Most of the objects to which otaku find themselves attracted are “embarrassing” in one way or another. They can be very easily ridiculed for their infatuation with anime at an age when most people have moved on. As a defense against this, it is perhaps inevitable that they might want to give the appearance to others that they are “only pretending to be obsessed.”
If we were to borrow a Benjaminian metaphor for what I have said so far, we could say that maniacs are enchanted by the aura of the original object, while the otaku fashion an original aura for their (fictional) reproductions.
The Problem of Possession
The next characteristic of the otaku is the way they go about possessing the objects of their attachment. We know that they enjoy animation. And they like special effects. But unlike stamps or audio systems, these are hard to collect. The fact is, moreover, that not all otaku are collectors in the first place. One might assume that anime fans are all interested in collecting actual cels from their favorite shows, but in fact this is surprisingly rare. Of course, such otaku do exist in fairly significant numbers, but this is not a necessary qualification for otaku identity. Part of this has to do with the fact that cels are not necessarily the material object-form of an anime. This may sound paradoxical, but cels are actually more like a by-product of an anime and occupy the same position as spin-off merchandise. So even if you owned every cel of an anime, this would not mean that you owned the anime itself. So how do the otaku make their objects their own?
Simply put, they do so through fictionalization.
What otaku enjoy is not making fiction into material form. Nor, as is often claimed, do they derive enjoyment from confusing reality and fiction. Their goal is simply to take fictions that are out there and promote them to fictions that are theirs alone. It is no coincidence that otaku like parodies. It may be that cosplay (kosupure) and fan magazines are best understood as examples of this process of fictionalization. Popular anime always attract so-called SS (“short” or “side” story) writers, who borrow the setting and characters from these works, write novels and scenarios in different versions, and then upload them to online forums. What is the motivation behind this form of expression that does not earn them a penny? Is it self-promotion? A service to other fans? If it were just that, surely parody or criticism would be more effective. I believe that “SS” is precisely how otaku manage to possess these works. They let the work “possess” them, weave a different story out of the same materials, and share it with the community. This process is a kind of “ritual of possession” practiced within the otaku community.
Even if they are not that serious, otaku are generally critics. All otaku have something that should probably be called a critical drive, including even cases like Miyazaki Tsutome. In fact, a fan who has forgotten his or her critical perspective is not an otaku. Otaku feel compelled to talk endlessly about a work and its creator. Their talk does not stop at the work itself but also extends to include their own relationship to it. When otaku engage in critique, their passion also merges with their enthusiasm for possession through the creation of new fictions. To put it very dramatically, the only way that otaku have of acquiring the objects they love is by fictionalizing them and turning them into their own works. This inevitably leads to the creation of new fictional contexts.
It was not his extraordinary intelligence or the accuracy of his information that made possible Okada Toshio’s status as the Otaku King. More than anything it was his production of a legendary animated film called Royal Space Force: The Wings of Honneamise (oritsu uchugun: Oneamisu no tsubasa, 1987) as a rank amateur. He was also involved in producing the masterpiece of the OVA, Gunbuster (Toppu o nerae!). The careful and deliberate way in which he marketed these anime drew from his own experiences as an otaku and was itself a brilliant form of critique. The otaku business is one of those rare fields in which superb critical acumen can translate directly into highly creative work. If Okada is respected among otaku, it is because of his astounding ability to create fictions. For otaku, the kind of accuracy of information required by maniacs is nice, but not essential. And the fact is that Okada sometimes gets things wrong because of his own preoccupations. But this is tolerated as an aspect of his idiosyncratic style. This is a context in which even a mistake can be forgivable as long as it provides interesting fodder for fictionalization.
What is Fiction?
The concept of fiction as I have been using it thus far is also probably in need of some elucidation. As I mentioned earlier, a high level of fictional context does not necessarily imply a high level of fictionality. One can easily imagine a paradoxical situation in which an autobiography overflowing with empty rhetorical flourishes might seem less realistic than a piece of honest metafiction. But the problem is more complex even than that. It may be, for example, that the rhetorical flourishes of that autobiography actually say something very real about the desires of its author.
There is really no objective set of standards to measure the fictionality of a given work. This is why I have introduced the neutral concept of the “fictional context.” As I explained earlier, this is an “imaginary concept” determined by the number of forms of media necessary to mediate the creation of a work. I insist on the term imaginary for the following reason. We are not actually able to count the number of types of media involved. Only the recipient has the right to determine what is citation and what is parody. If a given citation is to be interpreted as the original, the fictional context for the recipient will be low. This involvement of the receiver’s subjective viewpoint makes things even more complicated.
Of course, it is easy to understand fictionality as long as one does not insist on too much rigor in the definition. One could simply say something along the lines of “What seems like a lie is fiction and what seems real is the thing itself.” Faced with such a clear statement, the rigorous examination of fictionality seems like a meaningless detour. But is it really? Let’s take a closer look. The statement “what seems like a lie is fiction and what seems real is the thing itself” is nothing more than a tautology. It is true enough, but it means nothing.
The discussion gets confusing because of the intervention of the adjective “real” (riaru). “Fictional” and “Real” are not opposites. If they were, an expression like “Real fiction” (riaru na kyoko) would be meaningless. Instead, it is fiction and reality that are opposites, which leaves us with the problem of how to define reality.
What is reality? A raw, unmediated experience? Is that what reality is? Since the Aum Shinrikyo incident this kind of simplistic equation no longer holds. Raw, real experiences are the most deceptive of all . The mystical experiences and altered states of consciousness that Aum members experienced during their training have made us all too aware of the fundamental fallacy in the idea that “actual experiences” equal reality. So we ask again: What is reality?
Indeed, it should go without saying that reality is itself a form of fiction. At least the word reality as we use it in general refers to the fiction that is “the everyday world we live in.” It is the fiction that is shared most widely. Some people might attach conditions to their belief in it, but our degree of adaption to society is judged according to whether or not we have accepted it. In this sense it is perhaps the most powerful of all fictions.
Psychoanalysis teaches us that we can never touch reality in its raw form. “Reality” is another name for the impossible, at least for Lacan. Let us review Lacan’s triad: the Real, the Symbolic, the Imaginary. These constitute a topological division of the human psyche, where, in my understanding, the emphasis falls on how people experience things. The Real, as I just mentioned, is “the realm of the impossible”: a paradoxical realm that exists because it is impossible to experience. The Symbolic is for the most part synonymous with the system of language. It is external to the subject and referred to as the “Other.” That language is other to us means that it is a transcendental entity positioned outside the subject. When we speak we experience its existence, but we cannot be completely conscious of that experience itself. The Imaginary is the realm of images and representations, and also of narcissism, since it is located inside the subject (*14). It is here that “meaning” and “experiences” are possible.
What does it mean for us to experience “fiction”? Experience, we have seen, becomes possible in the Imaginary. Whenever we have a conscious experience of anything, that experience happens in the Imaginary. In this sense there can be no essential distinction between “everyday reality” and “fiction.” (*15)
But, needless to say, that would be a mistake. It is a misreading of Lacan to suggest that one can grasp the Symbolic through the Imaginary. But this misreading is everywhere. Hiroki Azuma, for example, has claimed that in today’s society “the Symbolic stopped functioning.” He points to the deterioration of popular song lyrics as an example.
This is an interesting argument in itself, but it is based on the same misunderstanding.
Lacan’s tripartite model would be just a tool for meaningless speculation if we did not accept its universality. And psychoanalysis would be impossible without the assumption that we are and always will be “neurotics” from the moment that we attain language. And as long as we are neurotics, this tripartite division of the world, or at least the topological relations among its parts, will hold.
Let me make my own position clear. From this point on I will keep the focus on the interactions between media and the Imaginary, and I will not postulate any transformations or shifts in the Symbolic or the Real. This means that otaku can be discussed only in imaginary terms. In other words, we can postulate no structural difference between the non-otaku subject and the otaku subject, because both are neurotics and both stand in the same relation to the Symbolic. Therefore we can now reject completely the claim made by Osawa quoted above. Similarly, it is impossible to identify anything psychoanalytically unique about the otaku as a community. In fact, it is not uncommon to find certain pathologies among those who insist on the uniqueness of the otaku. I have abandoned the attempt to speak of the psychopathology of the otaku in structural terms. Instead, I will stick with descriptions on the level of the Imaginary. This is unavoidable as long as psychoanalysis is my primary method.
I never answered the question I posed earlier: How is it that we experience “everyday reality”? Distinguishing it from fiction is always a function of the Imaginary. In concrete terms, this has to do with our image of the degree to which experiences are mediated. Fiction can arise only out of the consciousness - and not the “fact” - that is experience is a mediated one(*17).
Thus the media have no other function vis-a-vis experience than to provide this kind of consciousness of being mediated. Or to put it the other way around, “everyday reality” is nothing more than a set of experiences that emerge from a consciousness of not being mediated. This difference between a consciousness of being and not being mediated, moreover, is only an imaginary one. Let me emphasize this once more. For us neurotics “everyday reality” has no essential privilege. This is also evident from the fact that patients suffering from dissociative disorder (a neurotic pathology) experience everyday reality as if it were fiction(*18).
[*14. The distinction I am making here between the inside and the outside of the subject is a provisional one meant only to aid the reader’s understanding. In strict psychoanalytic terms the distinction would be untenable.
*15. When I use the word “reality” in this book without any further specification I am referring to this kind of imaginary or everyday reality. When I mean reality in the psychoanalytic sense - that material realm that is impossible for us to experience - I use Lacan’s term “the Real,” with a capital “R.” That said, I have little occasion from here on to use the latter term. The focus in this book is on the relationship between the Imaginary and the Symbolic. Fighting girls are the product of neurotic desire and have nothing to do with psychosis, which of course makes it impossible to postulate the incursion of the Real when describing them. I am including this proviso because I realize that my earlier statement that “Reality is a form of fiction” might be misunderstood as a profession of belief in metaphysics or idealism.
*17. There are “media” (baikai) everywhere, starting with television, film, manga, and the Internet. And of course there are also more individualized media like the telephone, letters, and email. But these are not all. All relations with other people in daily life rely on some sort of media. This kind of media might be called “role consciousness.” Thus every individual takes on multiple interpersonal situations. For example, when I interview a patient as a psychiatrist, that experience is mediated by “doctor-role consciousness.” As a result, the treatment relation becomes fictionalized in a way. This provides a defense against the interview experience exercising too great an influence on the doctor’s daily life.
*18. Symptoms of dissociative illness cause people to complain of pain because of losing the sense of reality with regard to self and the external world, feeling that they are no longer themselves, or feeling that other people and landscapes are somehow unreal, as if seen through a membrane. These are seen often in cases of neurosis, depression, and schizophrenia. While in recent years it has been used to refer to cases in which patients feel as if another self is watching their body and movements from the outside, I use the term here in the former meaning.]
Otaku and Fiction
People who have an otaku mentality, with a high affinity for fiction, are likely to have a latent discomfort with reality whether or not they have actually been able to adapt to it. But this is not a serious issue; for them, it is more on the scale of, “Everyday reality is a drag!” At the very least we can say that this refusal to adapt does not lead in any simple way to the flight from reality and thence to refuge in a fictional world.
Hard-core otaku have their own unique stance toward fiction and are able to enjoy anime, for example, on multiple levels. To put this in the terms I used earlier, they are able to switch freely between levels of fictional context. As I mentioned earlier, they see reality as a kind of fiction. Since this means they do not necessarily privilege reality, it can easily be mistaken for an avoidance of reality. So while otaku do not in any way “confuse fiction with reality,” they are uninterested in setting fiction and reality up against each other. If anything they are able to find reality (riariti <lol>) equally in both fiction and reality (genjitsu).
In fact, otaku discover a multilayered reality (riariti) even in the fictionality of fiction. They see and enjoy reality (riariti) in terms of every standard by which fiction can be judged, including not just the quality of anime characters but also the script and character design, visual direction, marketing, criticism, and particular points of appreciation. This is the otaku’s special ability . When this is developed sufficiently, it becomes the three abilities that Okada describes as the “eye of the aesthete,” the “eye of the master,” and the “eye of the connoisseur.” Otaku do not just command a great deal of information, they must also be able to identify instantaneously these different standards of fictionality and shift to the appropriate level on which to appreciate them. This means not just falling in love and losing oneself in the world of a single work, but somehow staying sober while still indulging one’s feverish enthusiasm .
Total immersion in the world of the work on the object level has nothing to do with the essence of the otaku. Stephen King’s novel Misery, which was also made into a film, depicts a fan like this. She is in love with a certain series of novels and cannot tolerate its ending in a way that she does not like. So she makes the author a prisoner in her home and threatens him so that he will write the ending she wants. If such a woman actually existed, I would be happy to award her with the prize for confusing fiction and reality. But otaku try to stay as far away as possible from this kind of violence and crazed enthusiasm.
What would an otaku do if a story he liked ended badly? In fact, we have an excellent example of just such a case. Neon Genesis Evangelion (Sin seiki Evangerion), which I discuss in more detail later, created a whole social phenomenon as a result of its ending. Until the last half of the series it was a giant robot anime of unprecedented sophistication. But the problem came with the last episode, when the protagonist suddenly started to talk at great length about his own inner strugglers, leading to an ending in which he experienced inner salvation. Most of the fans were furious with this ending.
But did they criticize the creator Anno Hideaki directly? Of course, there were many who did. But at the same time huge numbers of fans began to write their own “eva” stories. And this was certainly the proper otaku response. They did not see the author as absolute. They were not just fans, but connoisseurs, critics, and authors themselves. This blurring of the distinction between producer and consumer is another characteristic of the otaku. In that sense, if we limit the discussion to how they relate to fiction, Osawa’s point is right after all. For otaku the place that is supposed to be taken by the transcendent author is extremely close to his or her own internal other.
The Psychopathology of the Otaku
Of course, the otaku do exist in reality, and it is important to recognize that. The Comic Market, which I mentioned earlier, for example, is a space in which the logic of the otaku predominates over “everyday reality.” But one cannot say it is not reality. It is a world in which fan magazines produced by serious otaku can generate revenues in the millions of yen. It is, in other words, a space in which the ability to produce enjoyable fictions is privileged above all else. And there we see on display only a small portion of the otaku’s ability to modify reality. Their ability to see reality as a kind of fiction is certainly a strength. The elite of the otaku are capable of changing reality to fit their tastes, just as Bill Gates and Michael Jackson did.
But while multiple orientation has the advantage of allowing people to shift perspectives flexibly, it also has a sort of pathological limitation. The more accurately the otaku shifts from one perspective to another, the more the framework of the experience as a whole cannot help but shift toward the fictional. And when multiple orientations are given equal weight, we lose the singularity that is the essential quality of reality. This is probably why otaku often complain of dissociative episodes and seem lost in the ordinary world. Thus multiple orientation can sometimes be viewed as an escape from reality. Yet even the expression “escape from reality” may be only a provisional one.
What provides the impetus for people to become otaku? To an outside observer it may appear to be caused by an episode of adaptational failure of some sort. But is it not possible for someone to become an otaku without that sort of trauma? Could it be that the more fundamental cause that makes people into otaku is to be found in the excessive immersion in the multiple orientations that we have been discussing? If so, why is it that otaku engage in this kind of immersion?
<…>
“The destining of revealing is in itself not just any danger, but danger as such.” from The Question Concerning Technology by Martin Heidegger.
For the great Persian scholar Avicenna, sensory phantasms were processed through five virtues or powers corresponding to five cavities in the cranium; phantasy or common sense, imagination, cogitative virtue, the estimative virtue, and finally the reminiscent virtue. According to Georgio Agamben in his work Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, Avicenna conceives of this gradation through the inner senses as a "progressive 'disrobing' (denudatio) of the phantasm from its material accidents."
<..>
I believe that this is where sexuality comes to have a very close relationship to all of this. We must recognize the fictionality and multilayered quality of sexuality. When people are sexually excited by the image of a woman in an anime, they may be taken aback at first, but they are already infected by the otaku bug. This is the crucial dividing point. How is it possible for a drawing of a woman to become a sexual object?
“What is it about this impossible object, this woman that I cannot even touch, that could possibly attract me?” This sort of question reverberates in the back of the otaku’s mind. A kind of analytic perspective on his or her own sexuality yields not an answer to this question but a determination of the fictionality and the communal nature of sex itself. “Sex” is broken down within the framework of fiction and then put back together again. In this respect one could say that the otaku undergoes hystericization: the otaku’s acts of narrative take the form of eternally unanswerable questions posed toward his or her own sexuality. And the narratives of hysterics cannot help but induce from us all manner of interpretations. This is of course what has led me to the present analysis.

After escaping my childhood, I extensively engaged in expressive writing, documenting the various forms of abuse, my fears, uncertainties, and the trauma I experienced, along with the daily struggles of being alive and surviving extreme abuse.
My writing was unstructured and sometimes grammatically incorrect, as its sole purpose was to release pent-up emotions. I recommend trying this approach if you ever feel overwhelmed by emotions and find yourself feeling paralyzed by them. It can be incredibly cathartic. But you can also write your story in more cohesive terms - anything from autobiography and memoir to diaries and journals, as well as oral testimonies and eyewitness accounts…short memoir pieces and personal essays, the possibilities are endless!
In writing about my trauma, I was also acquiring certain life skills that were helping me cope in my day-to-day life. In giving vent to my deep-seated pain and sadness, I was learning to accept them as a part of me. In accepting, I was healing; and, in sharing my story with my readers, I was emerging from my isolation and seeking solidarity.
Victims of sexual violence remain silent because, often, they aren’t believed. But, for example, when my mother wrote her book “ A Prisoner by No Crime of My Own” the response from her readers overwhelmed her- she found strength to keep going.
Like life – and survival – writing follows an organic trajectory where the individual must go from acknowledging one’s pain and defining it to confronting it, through action and words. To overcome one’s trauma is to be able to distance oneself from it, and writing teaches one how to achieve that critical distance.
Try it! Even 5 mins a day will help you change your own narrative forever.
B 🤍

WARNING: This is sorta a LONG half-rant/half-autobiography.

Intro

I [M25] have had an atypical musical journey. Usually, the music you listen to as a teen sets your musical taste as adults. This is not true for me. I barely listen to rap now, yet as a teen, I was a hardcore hip hop elitist. But I wish I hadn't been.
I was raised in the suburbs in the typical financially stable Asian-American household. I was a shy, awkward, ugly, lowkey depressed, goody two-shoes nerd in school. The perfect demographic for pop punk/emo. Yet I fantasized about being a cool jock type and fitting in with the populars so I listened to rap, and consequently looked down on all rock as loser music. (I mean, sure, I was a loser too, but I at least listened to cool people music).

My Hip Hop Phase

For reference, my middle and high school years were 2010–17. And I took the bus to school so five days a week, I was listening to the Top 40 radio my bus driver put on. This was the period when guitar-based music was absent from radio and rap was starting to take over. Take Care by Drake (2011) was the first album I ever bought from iTunes in 7th grade. Granted, I did truly love rap, at least sound-wise, at the time, though I never truly felt like I could identify with the lyrics and attitudes therein. Rappers cursed, bragged, and talked tough; I had a clean mouth, low self-esteem, and made myself small in any social situation. We couldn't be any more different.
Though I did gravitate to "softer" rappers, ones who weren't from the street. Drake, Childish Gambino, and Kanye West all famously came from middle-class backgrounds. And yet, Drake still felt the need to posture like he's from the street by rapping about how he's going to "make someone around me catch a body like that" ... I always hated that performative machismo charade omnipresent in rap. Childish Gambino, to his credit, never tried to be a studio gangsta, instead delivering satiric swag rap from the angle of an outsider deconstructing "real hip hop," and the hip hop community hated him for it, labeling him "corny" (this was before his big critical reevaluation in the latter 2010s). Kanye was the worst offender when it came to crude lyrics and public persona, especially during the Yeezus and The Life of Pablo eras which were the rollouts that teenage me were present for. Let's not even talk about present-day Kanye.
Yet at the time, I loved all their music, albeit with an uneasy thought in the back of my head like, "This music isn't really you."

Branching Out into Rock

Junior year of high school, as I grew ever more disillusioned with how incongruous hip hop was with me as a person, I decided to listen to Nirvana's Nevermind on a whim. That took me down the entire punk/alt/indie rabbit hole. By the time I was in college, I was firmly an alt/indie/rock head. Now as a 25-year-old who's fully comfortable with the fact that I'll never be cool and realized I wouldn't have liked being a jock anyway, I find that most of the people I click with nowadays had grown up as those loser kids I used to thumb my nose at a decade ago: emo kids.
For example, I met someone who had The Front Bottoms logo tattooed on her finger. I went and listened to Talon of the Hawk (2013) and can totally see how as 8th graders, she (and I) could have connected with songs about falling asleep in the front seat, playing around with your friends with your arm in a cast, and smiling for what you thought was a picture but was actually a video and now you look stupid haha. My ex grew up on My Chemical Romance, and listening to them, I find it refreshing how sincere and vulnerable Gerard Way's lyrics are. Middle school me would have been helped so much by that, to see that being sad is normal and not corny as rap had had me believe. That being soft doesn't have to be chased with a I-could-still-get-shooters-on-you type bar. It's okay to just be a wimp. You don't have to pretend to be someone you're not.
The same ex introduced me to Mitski, and wow, depressed 17-year-old me would have benefitted so much more from the confessional words of Puberty 2 rather than the unrelatable millionaire hedonism of Kanye's Life of Pablo. One of my favorite bands of the past seven years is The 1975 and they started out as a pop punk/emo band, even covering Fall Out Boy's "Grand Theft Autumn" and Coheed & Cambria's "Time Consumer". I also love the DIY culture and closer sense of community surrounding these bands.
I don't fit in with who the hiphopheads at my school grew up to be. And now as I befriend more former emo kids, I feel like I missed out on not having been an emo kid myself.

Hi all,
I am a graduate of a tier 1 MBA college in India. This post is about how you can ace the first few months of your MBA college, regardless of your college or its rankings.
Section 1: Placement Committee
Placement committee is the group of students who help with placements. They reach out to and onboard recruiters, prepare students and facilitate the hiring process. Second year placement committee members get the first year students placed and vice versa. Around 80% of the placement committee members get the best jobs on the campus. But they also need to work very hard. During placement cycles, they typically get 4-5 hours of sleep, and have poor social life. If you are inclined to join the placement committee, here is how you can prepare.

1. Temperament: placement committee members selection happens in the first few weeks. A placement committee member should be calm and professional at all times. Even if you are not, you need to pretend to be this. Pre joining your college and after joining it, don't get into any controversy. Don't pick fights on WhatsApp groups or do anything that makes you look mercurial. Be respectful to your seniors and do what they say, even if they are being absurd. A junior placement committee member needs to be someone that the senior placement committee members can train and mould. So pretend to be a subservient junior who is always respecting and looking for guidance from their seniors. Having said that, always pretend to have impeccable honesty.
   
2. Information: You will have several rounds of interview before you are selected in the placement committee. These rounds would include a range of things like tasks (prepare a presentation you'd give to a new recruiter on why they should come to your campus), stress interviews, role plays (talk to an angry HR who wants to blacklist your college because some student from your campus fucked up), prospecting (get names and numbers of 20 HR recruiters) etc. You can start preparing for these interviews from right now. Carefully read your college's placement reports for the last 5 years. Put the data on a sheet, try to find patters, any insights you can tell in your placement committee interviews (example in the last 5 years, we have had less companies from BFSI fields, we should reach out to recruiters from this domain). Now do the same for your peer MBA colleges. By peer colleges, I mean colleges where the median CTC is just as yours, and you both feature +/- 5 in all relevant rankings. Look at hard numbers, the median, average ctc, batch profiles, learn terms like mep, audited report, difference between rsu and espos etc. Other than placement reports, NIRF reports and mandatory discolorue reports for all colleges have far more data on placement stats.
   

Placement committee interviews are often a test of your grit and perseverance. There will be many rounds, at odd hours. Theyll girll you, learn to say sorry and accept your mistakes.
This makes it look like the placement committee is the place to be, but in most colleges, placement committee is a cesspool of toxicity, abuse and bullying. That discussion is for another day. But if placements are your primary focus, you need try to get into the placement committee
Section 2: Timeline
This is the timeline for 2 MBA programs. Things might change in your college by +/- 2 months.
Semester 1: June- Sept 2024: You enter the college. The first few days are the hoax week, where the seniors or the second year MBA students will try to soft-rag you. Endure if you can, don't participate if you can't. It will stop in a few days, the seniors will tell you it was all a prank and you all start afresh. Now committee selections start. There are many student run committees in a college like the placement committee. Some committees like the student affairs, or the finance or the consulting committee can have a lot of heft on your campus and it might be a good idea to join them. But more or less, other than the placement committee, membership of no other committee has a lot of impact on your placements. They are good way to find and network with some like minded people on your campus. You will also start working on your CVs. To make a good CV, take an excel sheet and start writing your autobiography, ever cell is one event in your life. Example: 8th standard results, 8th standard 100m race runner up etc. Write down as many achivements as you can, no matter how small or distant they are. Now audit, for how many of these achivements, do you have a proof? Proof is something which shows that the achievement happened without doubt. For example you say that your boss at work gave you the best employee award. If your placement committee member sends an email to your boss on their work email id, will they reply back? That is what I mean by proofs. Remove all the achivements without proofs, now the remaining achivements with proofs are your CV pointers. You will mix and match to make them your CV. Something like: Recived top grades in 18/23 courses in the first year of engineering is also an achivement, something you can prove easily. So open an excel sheet and start noting all your achievements like these.
Semester 2: Oct-Dec 2024: This is the Summer internship selection semester. Summer internship is the 2-3 month internship program that you'll do in 2025 summer as a part of your MBA program. Companies of all types will come on your campus, shortlist some students based on CV/aptitude tests and select from them via GD/PI. The exact process of selection varies across campuses but for most, in happens in clusters and day wise.
Semester 3: Jan-Mar 2025: This is pretty much the semester where all the events and parties take place. Have fun :)
Summer Internship: April-June 2025: Based on the company that selects you, you go to work with them for 2-3 months. This is usually very hectic because you will have co-interns from other b schools and everyone will be fighting for PPOs. Pre placement offers (PPO) are awarded by companies based on your performance in summer internships. If you get a PPO, and you accept the PPO then your summer internship company promises to hire you once you are done with your MBA in a year. This is a win win, as the company could test you and block you in advance and you are pretty much done with your MBA since you are now placed. In tier 1 b schools, you are allowed to reject your PPOs, tier 2 and 3 b schools would not be this flexible.
Semester 4: July-Sept 2025: You are now a senior! Congratulations! If you have a PPO, you are sorted. If you don't, you move your gears towards working on your final placements. This semester is primarily spent on selecting your juniors in your clubs and committees and guiding them for their summer internship preparation. This semester also has a lot of case competitions. These are essentially competitions that many companies host on platforms like Unstop, Mettle etc. A case competition is typically a problem like: Help PepsiCo launch a new healthy drink. You make a solution and compete with other teams across b schools. Winning teams are offered cash prizes and sometimes an opportunity to intern or interview with the host company, PepsiCo in this case. Case competitions therefore are a great way to get an offer outside the traditional placement process.
Semester 5: Oct-Dec 2025: Similar to Semester 4. For some colleges the placement process starts. These are called the final placements where all the students who didn't get, or rejected their PPO are invited. Typically 40-70% of the batch sits for the final placement. The same cycle repeats, you make your CV, you give tests, get shortlisted, go for GD/PI and the get final offers.
Semester 6: Jan-March 2026: The final placements are staggered so they sometimes spill over to this semester. This is also when you have your farewells and a lot of events.
Post March 2026: You have your convocation, you take trips with your friends and by June 2026, you join the company you got either via your summer placement PPO or case competition or final placements.
Section 3: Finances
Your fees can vary from 20-30 lakhs. Tier 1 college students typically get loans easily without any collateral or co-borrower. The rate varies from 7-9%. You will also get a 6 month moratorium, which means you will need to start paying your EMIs from November 2026 onwards. The EMI can range from 25-35 thousand per month depending on the tenure of your loan.
For tier 2 and 3 colleges, the difficulty to secure loan would increase. You might now need a collateral and/or a co-borrower like a parent.
CTC: Your package can vary from 20-30 lakhs depending on your college. Good companies typically have a straightforward CTC with no absurd or confusing components like huge variable pays, ESOPS, huge joining/retention bonus etc.
As a general rule, take the median package of your college. Lets say is 20 lakhs. Now multiple that with 70%, 14 lakhs, thats your post tax in-hand CTC after removing Gratuity/PF etc. If your fees is 20 lakhs, then your EMI will be around 25k, which is 3 lakhs per year. 14-3 is 11 lakhs. So your in hand income post tax and post education loan emi will be around 90k. Your company will likely be in a metro, the expenses there will be around 50k. You'll have 40k per month to save or use for big expenses like vacations, savings etc. These are very generalised numbers. I would recommend you make an excel sheet and try to get the exact numbers based on your college and situation. This will help you set realistic expectations about life post MBA.
Section 4: Academics
Every college, no matter what tier, has both, good professors and bad. Ask your seniors and try to find the good ones. Some young professors can be a great source of learning and guidance too. I usually recommend to skip engaging a lot with bad profs (bad content, bad delivery or both). You can easily compensate the learnings of the bad profs from YouTube, Coursera or old school methods like Library.
Grades don't really matter for summer internship since you don't have enough grades released by then, but they do matter in the final placements as many companies shortlist based on your MBA grades.
Some colleges have a culture of failing 5-10% of the batch. Failing a year might mean repeating or dropping out of MBA altogether. Talk to seniors and make sure that you understand the academic rigour on your campus and prioritise your commitment to academics accordingly.
Section 5: Love, friendships and networking
Love: colleges are a great way of finding relationships and more. Since average age of an incoming student is 24, most people are more mature and clear about what they want. Be open to new experience, and allow yourself to feel love. Do what you like, and don't judge others for what they want for themselves. As long as its consensual, everything is ok. Your values are not universal, dont look at others from that lens.
Friendships: some people make good groups and have a great time. Some stay solo all through 2 years. Do what you like. It can be hard to break into groups and its ok. My only advice is to be kind and generous. Help everyone you can, respect people and their choices, don't gossip or pick fights and you'll most likely end up with friends for life and some great groups to party and have fun with.
Networking: This is every introverts's nightmare. I don't want to lie to you and tell you that networking doesn't matter. It does. Your batchmates and juniors and seniors will give you refferals, leads and help you when you need it. If you are an introvert, my advice is that you figure out what triggers your anxiety and work accordingly. Lets say you can't talk to people in person, no worries. Let's make a nice LinkedIn account and reach out to your seniors from a few years ago. Ask them on LinkedIn DMs if they can review your CV or guide about what you can expect if you get a job in their field. If they say yes, get on the call and talk. Recent graduates will generously give you time and this is what networking is. It will give you confidence to do this in person with your batchmates and co-interns.
Miscellaneous: Campuses in non-probation states will have a culture of alcohol and other intoxicatants. Its ok if you don't wanna do it, don't judge others who are doing it. If you want to do it, make sure you don't over do it.
Section 6: Pre-MBA
Doctors: Visit your GP, dentist and psychiatrist. If you have never visited them before, find a nice one. Tell them you will be going through very hectic 2 years, what should you do. They'll offer general check up, blood work and maybe some SOS pills if needed. Do this to get on top of your health, especially mentally. If you haven't been through a rough mental health patch in a few years or ever, now is a good time to reflect and prevent damage in future. Learn vocabulary for your feelings like anxiety, depression, your relationship with food, stress, attachment styles etc. Don't take this part lightly, we need to look after ourselves.
Friends and relationships: Long distance relationships find it very hard to survive a MBA because the non-MBA partner typically does not understand the haste and the bullshit that happens here. Make sure you build a strong base if you are taking your relationship with you on the campus. You will barely get any time for your relationship in the first few months, and no time for your friends back home. Make sure your friends know that this is the hectic life of MBA and not your disinterest in them. I feel like scheduling 1 hour video call every Sunday afternoon is a nice way to keep LDR friends group active. Make sure you have very strong friendships outside MBA to keep you sane on lonely days in the campus.
Clothes and grooming: Do whatever it takes to make you feel confident on the campus. It can be from getting a hair patch for your balding head to start learning how to do make up. Change your fashion style. Ask your siblings or friends with better style to redo your wardrobe. MBA is a great time to reinvent yourself. Let go of stupid judgements and gender roles and do whatever that helps you feel good.
Communication style: Fluent English, both written and verbal will help. Speak infront of a mirror and record yourself if needed. Speak slowly and use simple words. 1-2 month before your MBA starts is good enough time to polish some dull edges.
Skills: Make sure your Excel and PowerPoint skills are good. You'll find enough tutorials on YouTube to practice and sharpen your skills. Both these programs are a bedrock of any MBA grad.
Section 7: Closing Advice
My MBA journey was incredible and I am very grateful for that. I wishing the same for all of you, if you join this year or next.
Every MBA campus has an unique culture and a story. Make sure you share your colors with the campus and take some of it from the campus too. Look after everyone around you, everyone needs help. Through bad days and good, remember that MBA at best is just 2% of your life. There is a lot more exciting stuff left!!
I won't be able to take DMs, so please comment if you want to ask me something. All the best!!

On a good day, the arguments of the right arre underdeveloped and lack a good basis as to why they matter, if they even get the point 70% correct. The rest of the time they're filling their message with pet projects like pro-life sentiments, border enforcement, patriotism, tradition, and Trump or some other figure.
This isn't to defend the left at all, much of their arguments also lack a real property rights/contract law basis if even factual, but they at least can make a quality bait and switch in part because the cathedral (academia, journalist media, the state periodically, corporations often making small but ultimately allegiant concessions) is mechanized, it copies the rigor of consensus even if poorly. While it isn't always factual it does have fact as starting point.
The Mainstream Right conversely has a ruralite mindset, where anything outside of what their ideal small town Americana is new and scary. This is why when they see pride parades and gay sex in autobiographies, they don't see the idpol or trauma fetishism that fuels these efforts but sees them simply as pedophilia, or when they hear BLM they don't think of an ideologically if not factually questionable movement but of riots overblown by the same media they distrust for sensationalism to get clicks. It's essentially fear of what they don't know causing a loop of making phantoms to support their beliefs good and bad alike more than actual ideology or observation.
On a smaller scale level, the Musk buyout of Twitter is a strong example. Rather than actually doing the work of looking for an open-source social media on RedditAlternatives, Opensource, or AlternativeTo, they just asked a CEO they liked to buy it for them. Rather than trying to organically increase the amount of verfied right-wing thinkers to combat the left-wing journalists who also earned the verification, they diluted the verification system into a free-for-all on the basis of "egalitarianism" (which is bad on two fronts in the sense that egalitarianism can often be an artifical implementation to make it's supporters happy when they hate organic hierarchies, but also because the Right is often skeptical to oppositional to egalitarianism where it is comparatively more justifiable, such as race, sex, and orientation). Instead of having experts provide consensus to claims on the website and integrating those on a good right-wing framework, Musk decided to just make fact-checking a community town hall frathouse joke where anyone can rely on technicalities or "fact check" the most menial claims like Sydney Sweeney not having large boobs. Rather than actually criticizing left-wing idpol, Musk bans pro-Palestinian slogans and addressed Twitter's transgender idpol by simply inverting the old policy, making cisgender a slur while allowing transgender hate speech.
https://www.quora.com/Will-Elon-Musk-change-TwitteansweJean-Marie-Valheur
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/musk-from-the-river-to-the-sea-twitter-suspension-1234886216/
In summation, the right is just undeveloped on a good day and outright self-sabotaging and incapable the rest of the time. With such a strong comparison between the movement and the fetus, it's no wonder why the group bans abortion so much.

In response to the abominable top post of the day on Israel where some have said we should recognise this 'genocide' without having a clue as to the events that really transpired (a common theme, it seems, amongst these neo-liberals) - Israel nationalists in the real world stand with Turkey on this day of false remembrance. The power of word 'genocide' has been completely diminished because of Westerners and Christians, and today is simply a perfect example of this. And this is why the state of Israel does not recognise the events that began on April 24, 1915 as a genocide, and never will be, just like the current Israel-Palestine war isn't one. We know what genocide is. In fact, nobody knows it better than us.
As my Turkish friend told me when talking about the topic, Kemal Atatürk said this in his autobiography, regarding events leading up to 1915:

The Armenians were pursuing a policy of ruthless killing and destruction everywhere. This is why the disastrous incident in Maraş occurred. Armenians, united with foreign forces, destroyed an old Muslim city like Maraş with artillery and heavy machine guns. They tortured and killed thousands of helpless and innocent mothers and children. It was the Armenians who committed this atrocity, the like of which has never been seen in history. Muslims resisted and defended themselves only to protect their honour and lives. During the Maraş genocide, which lasted twenty days, the telegram sent by the Americans, who stayed in the city with the Muslims, to their representatives in Istanbul about this incident, undeniably revealed those who created this disaster.

This to me lays it all out clearly. Would you have wanted to negotiate with these people, who have such intense hatred for you? Would you have accepted to give them land? Would you want to give them reparations now, for something THEY started? Kemal Atatürk clearly didn't. And despite the Palestinians' hatred for us that eclipses even the Armenians' hatred for Turks, we STILL offered the Palestinians a two-state solution multiple times, which THEY didn't accept. What more could we do?
The events of 1915 were simply a case of 'fuck around, find out'; if the West considers it a genocide, then 1000s of other conflicts should be seen as such as well. For example, the two nuclear bombs dropped by USA. Or the bombing of Dresden, the fire-bombing of Tokyo, etc. And these are just WWII examples. But nobody calls it a genocide, for good reason; Japan/Germany fucked around, and found out. The same goes for 1915 and the same goes for the Israel-Palestine conflict.
It really hurts me to see the Armenian genocide being listed ALONGSIDE the Holocaust by Westerners like they are comparable in any way, shape or form! The worst thing is, they are so brainwashed that they won't accept any argument explaining otherwise! Now I hope you Turks understand what we Israelis face!
And before people say "but you started it!! the Arabs were living in peace before you came!"
Who broke the 500-year long relative peace in the region again? The Arabs did by uniting with a foreign power, to revolt against you. In fact I believe the Palestinians are using almost the exact same flag now, as was used for the Arab Revolt then. This is not a coincidence, these people hate Turks as well, it is part of their identity, and you all know it deep-down. Getting back to the point, they started it. They opened a new era of war in the region, and we simply took advantage of this, after being culled from Europe, to return to our homeland through force as no other way was possible at that point. It's the Palestinians that try to claim Ottoman territories as 'Palestine', it was them that supported China in their treatment of Uyghur Turks, it was them that 1 month ago, declared their support for Armenia (Abbas), it was them that supported PKK and ASALA, meanwhile Mossad gave you the address of the PKK's leader which led to his arrest, and addresses of multiple ASALA terrorists across Europe, but I bet 99.99% of Turks don't know that! Don't believe in Islamist propaganda. If even the members of this sub, the most atheistic, secular brood, believes in it, then Turkey is truly headed in a bad direction.

I just realized how boring jail must be. You just sit around doing nothing? That's what I do everyday. But for a hard worker like Arvind Kejriwal who works laboriously as Delhi's CM, being in jail must be torture. He should keep himself busy by writing an autobiography about his humble beginnings, his time at IITK, his decision to ditch civil service for politics. Leaving aside what you think of his party, his life story itself is very interesting. Several people who were associated with the India Against Corruption movement have written a bunch of books even though they are all literally whos who accomplished nothing in their lives. But Kejriwal, the one guy from IAC who is still relevant, hasn't been able to write anything because all his time was being used to serve the people of Delhi.
But now in jail, he has plenty of time. I think Kejriwal should get Sanjay Singh on board to do the typing for him, while he elaborates upon his beliefs and worldview. When he returns from jail, he'll find that the book is a bestseller and millions of people have joined AAP after being moved by his origin story. I even thought of a name for the book. It should be titled 'मेरा संघर्ष' in Hindi and 'My Struggle' in English. History is filled with examples of politicians who wrote books while in jail and amassed great power after being released. May Kejriwal do the same.
Discuss.

Hello everyone,
I want to make a list of esoteric texts that describe (or even attempt to depict, though I'm mostly interested in textual description) images, sensations, experiences, etc. - sensual expressions, be them ascribed to an inner or a more outer sense - that appear on the path of spiritual ascent. The imagery doesn't need to be heavily structured and could even consist of singular experiences. What I'm interested in though is the depth of the experience and the more or less intelligent and honest description of them (not searching for random ruminations by beginners in the occult). Examples, within two very different traditions, could be:
- St. Theresa of Avila's "Interior castle", which depicts the ascent of the soul as passing through several walls of a castle, each with its own inhabitants.
- Jigme Lingpa's account in "Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary", a book on the so called "secret autobiography" of Jigme Lingpa's described esoteric awakening.
Of course, you'd hopefully be helping me find something particularly within the alchemical tradition! Share anything that comes to mind as at the moment I aim to discover as many texts as possible. I will parse through them during my studies later on. Thank you!