I’m applying for composition contests. Sometimes I’m asked by “anonymous” contests to provide composer biographies, compositional activities, et cetera.
One contest specifically required a list of “awards, degrees, ect.” I can guarantee that if degrees and exclusive summer music camps have any bearing on the winner of the competition, I won’t win.
I’m sure that there are plenty of spoiled trust fund babies whose parents paid for the best teachers and sent them to the WASPiest music schools while paying for all their tuition and expenses.
Shouldn’t composition contests be about the music? Why is it necessary for me to provide this unnecessary information?
If these contests were truly fair and anonymous, none of this information should matter. Shouldn’t the competition be about judging the quality of the music?
If competitions discriminate based on degrees, they unfairly advantage artists who came from privilege and silence the voices of the diverse artists who did not. Maybe straight white male trust fund baby No. #41 who lives in Long Island and who’s grandparents are in the social register has that expensive Juilliard degree his parents paid for and a picture perfect resume. Is he the only one who deserves accolades and awards? Is he the only composer who deserves to be heard?
If a composition contest is truly anonymous or fairly judged, there’s no reason I should have to provide any of this information. The only thing that should matter is the quality of the music that was submitted to the contest.
That being said, if I were to try an exercise in futility because I’m a desperate composer and submit these PDFs anyways, how long should they be and what sort of information should they include? Are there any examples online of a good composer bio or list of compositional activities?

It's often said that ancient Indians didn't have much of a tradition of history writing similar to that of the Greco Romans or the Chinese. We did have the Puranas and the Itihasas but they are riddled with myths and legends which makes it hard to distinguish which event is historical and which is mythical or legendary. The vast timespan of the Puranic timeline also doesn't help our case. The Buddhist sources also talk of various events and though they are comparitively milder with myths, still mostly has a didactic nature. Something similar could be said for the Jaina sources.
The Puranic chronology of Kings and their dynasties give adequate information about the dynastic chronology of the Kings in ancient India. However, they are quite inconsistent with their lists and apart from a few succession conflicts and details about a few kings and dynasties, the Chronologies barely give us any information about the events associated with those kings.
Apart from these we mostly rely on later works of literature which are usually biographies rather than a formal form of history writing, plays which talk of possible events of the past and finally inscriptions.
One could clearly see that none of these sources have a descriptive historical nature. Something that we find in Ancient Sinitic and Greco Roman sources.
However, is it possible that there did exist a tradition of history writing similar to that of the Greeks or the Chinese among the Indians but it has been lost because of unknown reasons? Think about it. The plays and the literary works written on various events of the past were written several centuries after the supposed events took place. For example we find mentions of the Mauryan empire well until the times when James Princep deciphered the inscriptions of Ashoka. A diverse genre of texts mention them in Religious literature, plays, biographies etc etc all written in various time periods since the fall of the Mauryan empire. For the poets, playwrights and biographers to mention the Mauryas in their works, there has to be a way by which they have a knowledge about them and their existence. Also the fact that the Ashokan pillars were used to inscribe inscriptions by subsequent kings like Samudragupta for example, shows that there seems to be a powerful legacy attached to them.
The Mauryas are just one example. There are many such events about the past related to other political entities described in the vast corpus of ancient and early Medieval Indian literature. This only makes sense if there exists a medium through which these events were known by the people of those times. Which points out that there seemingly did exist a form of history writing that wasn't just a didactic form of text riddled with myths like the Puranas and the Itihasas or the Buddhist and the Jaina texts.
Why do we have no traces of this form of historical literature? There could be multiple reasons for it. One of the reasons could be that this genre of literature wasn't taken as seriously as the other genres. Which is why there could have been many inconsistencies in this type of literature. Which explains the inconsistency in the puranic chronology of Kings. The Brahmanas who composed the Puranas could have referred to these texts when they were constructing the list of rulers and because of their inconsistencies, it led to the subsequent inconsistency in the puranic list as well. This genre of texts was probably used mostly by poets and playwrights for their works and as a result didn't seem to have a serious importance in society as plays and poems are usually associated with pleasure. It possibly didn't have much of a political importance similar to the one we see in the other contemporary civilizations.
Another reason could be that this genre of historical literature simply died out with the fall of imperial powers in the sub-continent. With the emergence of feudal polities in the later half of the 1st millenia AD, the importance to record the dynastic history of large imperial powers in the north of India might have decreased. Which is why this supposed tradition of historical literature might have died out until the emergence of the turkic powers would introduce a new form of historical literature derived from the Islamic tradition of history writing.
The final and the most simplistic explanation would be the turkic invasions themselves. The Turkic invasions led to the destruction of multiple religious institutions of the native Indians like temples and viharas which were the leading storehouses of knowledge in pre Medieval India. The destruction of these institutions might have led to the destruction of multiple of this kind of historical literary works. However this would be refuted as other genres of literature did survive the Islamic invasions. Why would the turkic rulers only eliminate this kind of literature and not the other kinds?
Ofcourse there is no physical proof of the existence of such a type of historical literature in ancient and early Medieval India. One may only hypothesize the existence of such. However, this seemed to be an interesting theory in my head. Give your views on this if you like.

Hi, I'm Alessandro from Colombia, and I'm still in the fight.
A couple days ago I relapsed. And I posted the following in PornAddiction during my guilt phase. I deleted it later in the day. I got lost out of focus in telling my story, but my main reason to go online was to seek for help about relapsing. After the post, I didn't actually continued reading the book. After some days whitout using, I relapsed again, I've had about 7 relapses since my fight started. Today I did it again, and opened the book just after doing it. I went to the ¨nature¨ section and reviewed ¨A pleasure or a crutch?¨... ¨Porn isn't pleasant¨... That is the only thing I do not agree with the book, and this doubt has cost me several of my relapses. Today I reviewed that part, comparing porn with food, and the book says that they are exact opposites. I read it again, and again, asking myself, analizing the arguments, but it just doesn't seem correct. Actually, the hackauthor doesn't say it isn't a pleasure, it just says that it's sabotaging happines mechanisms. So I went to science direct and found this: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pneurobio.2012.05.004 . And thought ¨ok, it is correct that porn is in fact, a pleasant cue. But it is also correct that is the kind of pleasant stimulli of a heroine injection¨. Then I read this: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2015.06.005 . And found that it's an pleasant stimulli not only for addicts, but also for normal people. So my biggest argument against the book rings true for me. So today I just did a desperate google search: ¨is porn enjoyable?¨, and that led me to find this subreddit. I read a few posts and felt saved, this is the kind of community I need, PornAddiction disappointed me. I'll keep reading you and the book to learn what to do with that question: ¨is porn enjoyable?¨.
The following is that post:
______________________________________________________________________________________________________,
Why did I fail? My story, let's talk.
I spent almost 1 month reading Easy peasy. Long ago I realized I'm an addict, this wasn't a problem for me, I'm very self-conscious, kind of a hobby writer (obviously not in English as you can tell by now). The day I "clicked" while reading the book I spent almost 12 hours in a row writing something like a biography, focused in how porn have changed my life for over 11 years of addiction since I was 8yo. That "click" moment (maybe you know how it is, if you've completed the book) was in January 2024.
Just after completing the book I lived a couple weeks enjoying what is like to remember how to live a human life of freedom. But this surely wasn't the end of this illness. Back in the day I tried all methods. Willpower, streaks, even paid a subscription to app-block just before I gave up and threw it all, all my life, career and aspirations to thrash. After that I accepted I needed help, and then discovered the book (more than discovering it, because I discovered it in habitica in a time before the first suicide note and academy failure, I accepted I have to give it a serious try, not like the first time). Then, after for once in my life trying to be open minded in something, in my most beaten, broken spirit, soul naked moment, I took a learner role with the book, and I could manage to understand it. I understood the things I understand today, this sounds funny but you may know what I mean, those sort of things you simply can't un-understand. Like how you were thinking before how you thing now, discovering that you aren't alone. That old mind was like being a monkey living in a desert island, didn't know how I got there, didn't know how to get out of there, just making poor, illusory conclusions to survive, like: "I'm feeling depressed and hollow inside because of the death of my brother", the sad truth being that, I wasn't even capable of feeling something about it, because the fog in my brain. Used a lot of things to fill the void, not only porn, but also collecting videogames, thinking that playing games is my purpose in life (that, sadly, isn't an exaggeration of my way of thinking back then) That was the life before the mere act of understanding. That understanding is the same click I'm talking about the click that marked the end of a live of making up false realities to cope with existence, all by myself.
But hear me out, just understanding is not everything. That I realized after living a couple weeks of remembering what living a real life is, like the one I was living when I was a kid, before all of this shit.
The most hearth and mind braking thing was beggining to happen to me. The unavoidable relapse. Even when feeling the most hard trained mind, after feeling one of the best stories in the sea of life of war stories versus this monster, this begun to happen to me: forgetting. I thought forgetting was impossible for things that you just understand. But that's a lie, another made up conclusion of the monkey, now you understand me how it works? Subtle logical ideas that you just have and you don't question. Thruth is, you can un-understand things.
I started to forget how the life was before, that literal hell in this world. Despite of how vastly low my life got in those times, the way I felt in real time how my brain was literally rotting, like the room that all week long, contained my endless cycle of waking up, jacking up, feeling like shit, have to study, don't study, feeling like shit, jacking up because I'm feeling like shit, and playing games in the night because the night is for playing games and rest for the arduous work day, even that literal hell I could forget.
I started to forget it day after day of joy and happiness.
Until the day that it just seemed no so bad to me to watch just one peek, it was by waiting for the ads of an anime page to load, knowing exactly what this pop-up page will show. That day I booked a date with a psychologist (right before starting to read the book I was getting to the neuro psychiatrist) and she told me to keep writing as I was doing for necessity in my most anxious days. But after everything just kept going downstairs. Even after reading the book, before this announced and hyped relapse I wasnt doing it right. I couldn't have a date with my girlfriend, which I told all of this process, making sex and orgasms uncomfortable for her, without having sex. Saying to myself that sex and orgasm with a real woman is ok, but knowing deep inside, that I just don't want to do it right know, and even if this is real, it feels like it is triggering the cycle again, even if it doesn't, I personally feel like it does.
So after finishing the book for the first time, yes I enjoyed freedom, but it wasn't for long. Even before the relapse, every single sex session with my girlfriend seemed to harm my mind. I felt guilty.
Why I failed?
After reading the book one time, I started to have the capability to read other books. I started reading a bunch of them at the same time. "Un día en la vida de Iván denisovich", "la república", and digital minimalism by cal Newport, because I knew that the second problem in my life, born because of and also being a backward feedback to the porn addiction, is internet addiction. So I thought the right next step to take is reading a book to help that addiction too.
I think that was the mistake.
I hate social media, but today I'm posting this because I truly want to know the opinion of people that have the same or more knowledge that me. Usually I write this things for myself, and sometimes I share them with my girlfriend and close ones. But this time I want real competent minds in this field to give me it's opinion, it's the first time I write this kind of things in other language, but I read easy peasy in English so I'm thinking genuinely in spite of "translating" my thoughts.
Today I did the thing I think is the correct step that I didn't saw the first time I read the book. Mainly because of one sentence at the end of it, of one guy saying "some people go on in a eternal cycle of re-reading easy peasy" so I understood ok doing so is bad, then I started reading about digital minimalism, not even the recommended lectures by the hackauthor like the addictive voice recognition technique. And after even watching some coomer meme archive (I know is a good movement, but being realistic, those memes are made by a wide range of people, not everyone of them are psychologists like Allen Carr or the hackauthor, not even people with the introductory science based knowledge of the ones who read the book, and besides of the few memes that cleverly show deep and hard to digest realities, like the ones that helped me realize that even though sex with my partner might be good, I'm acting like a depravate thinking of sex everytime I se her alone with me, the majority of memes are made by people that make memes, not artists, I saw a lot of people still thinking about streaks, and a lot of Christianity, and above all of that, what am I doing watching memes to help an addiction man... )
So after reaching that point I had enough. "I'm walking a long ago twisted path, it's time to go back by the road I've been walking, and pause, and think, and solve... " And today I decided to just read the book again. And I have a number of conclusions to share.

1. This is an example by me, a medical student: what I did the first time reading the book is like reading one article for the exan and getting to the next one just after finishing the last sentence of the previous one. The day of the test, and the test is stumbling across accidental peaks some day, like a pop-up, a social night (don't underestimate this shit like me, even if like me you are poorly social, and while reading those sentences in the book you thought "that advice is not for people like me", one day you'll have to socialize, and damn... That's some relapse factory), or being alone and late in the night, that real life test situations, will ask for your knowledge, and if you just studied it one single time, without the most important thing in learning, which is recalling and "repasar", you are most likely to fail that exam, like I did.
   
2. The information in the book never ceases to be enough for me. Even for the most stubborn, egocentric mind, this book schools. I'm not a newbie, one big chunk of the book is focused to helping people lose the fear and accept the addiction, a lot of time ago I'm not longer in that step, and I understand a lot of the brainwashing pillars and went deeper in those, bun even though, finally reading it again makes me feel like the first time. It feels like there are new words between each paragraph that wasn't there the first time. It feels like there are some ideas that are only readable for people that have live that success time, encountered new traps, and failed.
   
3. This time I'll take my time for this. I've been addicted since 8yo, more than 12 years. Even if I spend another 12 years working on this, it's fine for me as long as I'm free. I felt like I beated the game, and that I'm no noob that have to go back to the tutorial, that the next step would be other books, treat other problems in my life fast, but this is not like a game that you beat, actually you beat the game at the very time you open the book for the first time.
   

A long time have past since I finished easy peasy for the first time, after that I went to the psychologist, relapsed a couple times, touched deep ground, fought multiple times with my values, had a lot of tests, had some peaks, have been heavily concerned about the subject of the relationsheep between the addiction and having sex with my partner, surely the most frustrating and difficult doubt to resolve. But certainly, above all of that, I'm much better that I was that first time finishing easy peasy. And that doesn't end in just comparing me with myself to feel optimistic about the progress in this, that means I'll use this new learning abilities gained for focusing in mi career for one time in my life, failing and living new traps and ideas that always were in the book but I didn't understood the first time, to keep working on this.
What do you think? This is my story in a nutshell, that text I wrote that day after the click, was a 12 hours long, this was just 1, that is the impact of this book in my life, and this post is the new way of feeling that I'm not alone in this, and you can help me, and I can help you, than I'm trying. I thing that text is valuable to share with you, because it can help you, but I'll have to translate it and censor it, maybe one day. The psychologist told me months ago I should share everything I write online, but again, I'll have to censor it, so I kept doing in for me, this is the first time I follow her advice, let's see how we do.
I'll keep reading, keep living, keep working on this, actually I have a decent streak, but I would hate being counting days like my prehistoric times. Hope you don't hate my poor writing so much, hope I'll read your opinions, see ya

Welcome to the /ursulakleguin "What Le Guin or related work are you currently reading?" discussion thread! This thread will be reposted every two weeks.
Please use this thread to share any relevant works you're reading, including but not limited to:

• Books, short stories, essays, poetry, speeches, or anything else written by Ursula K. Le Guin
  
• Interviews with Le Guin
  
• Biographies, personal essays or tributes about Le Guin from other writers
  
• Critical essays or scholarship about Le Guin or her work
  
• Fanfiction
  
• Works by other authors that were heavily influenced by, or directly in conversation with, Le Guin's work. An example of this would be N.K. Jemisin's short story "The Ones Who Stay and Fight," which was written as a direct response to Le Guin's short story "The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas."
  

This post is not intended to discourage people from making their own posts. You are still welcome to make your own self-post about anything Le Guin related that you are reading, even if you post about it in this thread as well. In-depth thoughts, detailed reviews, and discussion-provoking questions are especially good fits for their own posts.
Feel free to select from a variety of user flairs! Here are instructions for selecting and setting your preferred flairs!

The idea is to have a hotkey/menu that opens up the PCM / Player and/or Faction Encyclopedia.
It can list every player in your faction (Across all servers);
Each with their own stats and character portrait / gear / civilian clothing
Stats could include;
Name - Rank - K/M walked - LZ Drops - Preferred Weapon - Wealth - K/D Ratio -
And also, an optional
Biography -
Section, such as EVE Online; where players can fill out their biography
e.g 'Peter Baile is an X ADF officer, who travelled to Asia to find a wife after reoccurring PTSD. Peter found himself at __ when the event happened, and quickly signed up to Crimson Special Forces. Peter now serves as a PCM, often joining squads as a rifleman; with his preferred weapon the Mosin Nagant and the AKSM.' (The UI may also include a 'send message' / 'invite to squad' option.
This could also lead into a faction tab;
Which could introduce further mechanics. As it would be fantastic to have faction-based missions;
e.g 'Patrol from xyxy to xyxy in a minimum 3 man squad and return to HQ with no KIA.'
Reward - 1500 Action Points
These points / influence could be used to claim territories / gain Faction wide resources. (Faction resources for example could be field medical tents setup for 24 hrs {Accessible only by the faction that has deployed it - at POI's and AI Mission Spots, or Special Guns / Ammo available at the market to all faction members for a specified time window etc}
Etc ~ Futhermore, by doing so, introducing a global faction system in some way.

• Perhaps, we could introduce outposts, that control sectors of the map (circle radius).
• Perhaps, they could serve as extra spawn points instead of base, and can be attacked and overwhelmed.

One would get a notification that 'enemy forces spotted at Outpost Tango' and there is a timer to get there or what not.
Anyway, thank you for reading my ideas.
The Player Encyclopedia idea is just another example of further immersion to be added simply to this beautiful game.
Yours Sincerely, LCP Peter Baile (Crimson Rifleman)

If you manage to see this, I NEED ADVISE. My town has a summer musical and I am in the Pit Orchestra. This my first time in a theater production, so I have no idea what in the world I am doing. There's a actoproduction/pit biography application that everyone has to fill out. I need help from the theater kids to somehow create a draft of sorts. Here's the criteria:
Write in the third person. (For drafts sake you can just put Y/N or a pronoun)
Try using a clever adjective or two. For example: madcap, self-assured, feisty.
Avoid overusing words like thrilled, excited, debut, and mainstage.
Hit the highlights of your theatre experience.
Write using the inverted pyramid style - putting the most important details first.
Feel free to include one or two hobbies, interests, or career points.
THANK YOU <3

Type: Specialization.
Tldr: The user can get a book they read "signed" and depending on the theme of that book, 1 of 6 abilities can be activated holding the book. Signed books are like limited use spellbooks and specifically about who signs them.
If the user has a book in one hand and with the other hand touches a living or dead person whose name is known, the book and all copies of it that the user touches will receive the "signature" of this other person. Using this method you can only have that person's signature in those specific books. Signed books cannot be altered.
Holding a signed book in one hand allows the activation of a special ability. Books that lack coherence, the user doesn't understand, or have been created with the intention of satisfying this hatsu are invalid. The books can be used by anyone who hasn't signed them.
The effectiveness of the book ability is based on the percentage read. The uses are related to the number of pages read also by the user. Once it runs out of uses, the user will need to find other copies of the same book. The type of ability it provides depends on what theme the user genuinely considers to be the main one.

Themes

• Love (Manipulation): The person who signs can be controlled every time they come into contact with the book. There is no need to continue holding it if it is given to the person.
  • Number of pages: How much time (seconds) the person can be controlled.
  • Percentage: How much control you have of the person.
• Life and Death (Conjuration): A unique nen weapon depending on who signs it.
  • Number of pages: Time in seconds that the summoned weapon lasts.
  • Percentage: Quality of the summoned weapon.
• Nature (Enhancement): Reading the book from the beginning and touching the person who signed it, heals him.
  • Number of pages: Rereading pages has no effect until you reach the end of the book and pick up another copy.
  • Percentage: Healing effectiveness.
• Identity (Specialization): Data about the person who signed will be revealed in the form of a biography. This permanently uses up read pages. The information is always the same, but the quantity and clarity vary.
  • Number of pages: Number of words.
  • Percentage: How detailed the information is.
• Society (Emission): Allows two-way remote communication with the person who signed.
  • Number of pages: Amount of information that can be shared until it runs out.
  • Percentage: A higher percentage allows you to send more complex information such as images, sounds and memories.
• Time (Transmutation): You can transfer the signature to several books that you have already read and that have the same or fewer pages added in total than the original. All versions of those books will receive the same signature. This allows you to get several uses from the same signature. To be usable, these books also require passing the uses from a copy of the original Time themed book. The copies of the original book will basically work as batteries for these new ones and can recharge the same book. Example: Book about Time signed by A (300 pp.) > Nature Book (50), Life Book (150), Society Book (97) now all also signed by A.
  • Number of pages: Pages that you can dedicate to another book and can be used to recharge it with other copies.
  • Percentage: How different the new book is allowed to be from the original.

Other details

The user can use nen to create an identical copy of a book by passing it to another that has the same or more pages (not signed). This takes one second per page.
As stated, the signature remains even with the death of the person.
If, upon further reading the book, the user considers that the theme is another, then the next time they touch a copy, its theme will change with the same number of uses.
Forgetting the content of a book lowers its percentage.
Touching another book about the same story from one already signed, gives them the same signature. Each book has its number of uses, whether it has more or fewer pages, affects it.
Although I stated that the number of pages is the meassure, this is more of an approximation based on the number of words. Books with larger or smaller fonts have the same length and uses.

II. The Narcissistic Personality of Our Time
Narcissism as a Metaphor of the Human Condition
…
Theoretical precision about narcissism is important not only because the idea is so readily susceptible to moralistic inflation but because the practice of equating narcissism with everything selfish and disagreeable militates against historical specificity. Men have always been selfish, groups have always been ethnocentric; nothing is gained by giving these qualities a psychiatric label. The emergence of character disorders as the most prominent form of psychiatric pathology, however, together with the change in personality structure this development reflects, derives from quite specific changes in our society and culture - from bureaucracy, the proliferation of images, therapeutic ideologies, the rationalization of the inner life, the cult of consumption, and in the last analysis from changes in family life and from changing patterns of socialization. All this disappears from sight if narcissism becomes simply “the metaphor of the human condition,” as in another existential, humanistic interpretation, Shirley Sugerman’s Sin and Madness: Studies in Narcissism.
The refusal of recent critics of narcissism to discuss the etiology of narcissism or to pay much attention to the growing body of clinical writing on the subject probably represents a deliberate decision, stemming from the fear that emphasis on the clinical aspects of the narcissistic syndrome would detract from the concept’s usefulness in social analysis. This decision, however, has proved to be a mistake. In ignoring the psychological dimension, these authors also miss the social. They fail to explore any of the character traits associated with pathological narcissism, which in less extreme form appear in such profusion in the everyday life of our age: dependence on the vicarious warmth provided by others combined with a fear of dependence, a sense of inner emptiness, boundless repressed rage, and unsatisfied oral cravings. Nor do they discuss what might be called the secondary characteristics of narcissism: pseudo-self-insight, calculating seductiveness, nervous, self-deprecatory humor. Thus they deprive themselves of any basis on which to make connections between the narcissistic personality type and certain characteristic patterns of contemporary culture, such as the intense fear of old age and death, altered sense of time, fascination with celebrity, fear of competition, decline of the play spirit, deteriorating relations between men and women. For these critics, narcissism remains at its loosest a synonym for selfishness and at its most precise a metaphor, and nothing more, that describes the state of mind in which the world appears as a mirror of the self.
<…>
Scribe Note:
I think the moment Pathological Narcissism is taken as an opening through which contemporary culture and subjectivity can discussed, in concrete relation to socioeconomic or historical particularities, is the moment the Pathological Narcissus is transformed into a metaphor. Here I understand the metaphor as intrinsically concrete. Serving as a connective tissue, medium, and threshold. Alternatively a meeting place. The shape of the Pathological Narcissus orients and organizes. Find Lasch’s approach implicitly architectural. He approaches his work as a craftsmen. Reading Lasch I envision a series of papers detailing seemingly disparate cultural phenomena unfolding and filling in a human-outline, this outline is the Pathological Narcissus. Flipped right-side up, the Pathological Narcissus reveals the real framing device. Contemporary technologies and the move away from the Industrial without properly buffering the agrarian or the small and mid-sized manufacturing that contained/shaped the animating brilliance, innovativeness, and sociality of the American peoples. The Pathological Narcissus cannot be concrete without the abstract as its genesis. Abstract in so far as it is an atomized or segregated sequence of symptoms (an individual reduced to his symptoms) that emerges into view within the transferal space(eros-field) of the analyst’s office. Detailed and expounded upon in the literature. The grounding is perhaps necessarily abstract (to clarify, my usage of the term is distinct from spectral).
Lasch appears at the verge of anticipating and integrating the easy criticism one might levy against him, that this all rests on the presupposition that psychoanalysis has any genuine scientific validity, that Melanie Klein and Otto Kernberg’s contributions to psychoanalysis serve as the standard bearer of psychoanalytic theory and practice (concretely if I’m not mistaken this is absolutely the case in the United States) and more to the point that the psychoanalyst is a trustworthy authority - into his own Criticism. In my reading of The Culture of Narcissism and The Minimal Self, Lasch spirals around this particular critique and the implications. As if it’s a thread we mustn't risk pulling on lest the whole thing unravels. Serves almost like a therapeutic fiction or ‘noble lie’. Still I think it’s implicit in Lasch’s broader critique. In the essay From Mirror to Window: Curing Psychoanalysis of its Narcissism, James Hillman (who I believe had a superior approach to the question of the Image or Icon compared to Lasch who expresses a stunningly consistent Anglo-Germanic and Reformationist contempt for imagery, indeed Lasch’s Iconophobia is nigh Islamic) notes as much,
“Eminent culture critics - Karl Krauss, Thomas Szasz, Philip Rieff, Christopher Lasch, Paul Zweig, and the notorious Dr. Jeffrey Masson - have each seen that psychoanalysis breeds a narcissistic subjectivism inflicting on the culture an iatrogenic disorder, that is, a disease brought by the methods of the doctors who would cure it.”
The “personality disorder” viewed in this light is a diagnostic category that could only come about thanks to the faddish popularity of psychoanalysis. The mother-tongue and womb-religion of the narcissist is psychoanalysis.
The metaphor serves as the site of agonism. Что делать? What is to be done?
What Lasch does here, in my opinion, is update the Narcissus. Can see why this continues to prove a difficult task. One of the issues with the Metaphor is that it becomes very very difficult to differentiate it from the Phantasmatic Type. Especially once it enters into popular usage. Danger of using psychoanalytic terminology in this manner outside of the institution of psychoanalysis. The Pathological Narcissus is that thing the other person is. The tinge of recognition is painful. Or perhaps the greatest danger comes from over identification with the Spectral Narcissus which is easily syncretized with seductive literary or cinematic types i.e., the Superfluous Man or whatever Woody Allen is- and/or falling into a masochistic hypochondria loop of psychic despair. Important to have the example of what an actual Pathological Narcissist is.
<…>
Psychology and Sociology
Psychoanalysis deals with individuals, not with groups. Efforts to generalize clinical findings to collective behavior always encounter the difficulty that groups have a life of their own. The collective mind, if there is such a thing, reflects the needs of the group as a whole, not the psychic needs of the individual which in fact have to be subordinated to the demands of collective living. Indeed it is precisely the subject of the individuals to the group that psychoanalytic theory, through a study of its psychic repercussions, promises to clarify. By conducting an intensive analysis of individual cases that rests on clinical evidence rather than common-sense impressions, psychoanalysis tells us something about the inner workings of society itself, in the very act of turning its back on society and immersing itself in the individual unconscious.
Every society reproduces its culture - its norms, its underlying assumptions, its modes of organizing experience - in the individual, in the form of personality. As Durkheim said, personality is the individual socialized. The process of socialization, carried out by the family and secondarily by the school and other agencies of character formation modifies human nature to conform to the prevailing social norms. Each society tries to solve the universal crises of childhood - the trauma of separation from the mother, the fear of abandonment, the pain of competing with others for the mother’s love - in its own way, and the manner in which it deals with these psychic events produces a characteristic form of personality, a characteristic form of psychological deformation, by means of which the individual reconciles himself to instinctual deprivation and submits to the requirements of social existence. Freud’s insistence on the continuity between psychic health and psychic sickness makes it possible to see neuroses and psychoses as in some sense the characteristic expression of a given culture. “Psychosis,” Jules Henry has written, “is the final outcome of all that is wrong with a culture.”
Psychoanalysis best clarifies the connection between society and the individual, culture and personality, precisely when it confines itself to careful examination of individuals. It tells us most about society when it is least determined to do so. Freud’s extrapolation of psychoanalytic principles into anthropology, history, and biography can be safely ignored by the student of society, but his clinical investigations constitute a storehouse of indispensable ideas, once it is understood that the unconscious mind represents the modification of nature by culture, the imposition of civilization on instinct.

• Freud should not be reproached [wrote T. W. Adorno] for having neglected the concrete social dimension, but for being all too untroubled by the social origin of… the rigidity of the unconscious, which he registers with the undeviating objectivity of the natural scientist… In making the leap from psychological images to historical reality, he forgets what he himself discovered - that all reality undergoes modification upon entering the unconscious - and is thus misled into positing such factual events as the murder of the father by the primal horde.

Those who wish to understand contemporary narcissism as a social and cultural phenomenon must turn first to the growing body of clinical writing on the subject, which makes no claim to social or cultural significance and deliberately repudiates the proposition that “changes in contemporary culture,” as Otto Kernberg writes, “have effects on patterns of object relations.” In the clinical literature, narcissism serves as more than a meta-phoric term for self-absorption. As a psychic formation in which “love rejected turns back to the self as hatred,” narcissism has come to be recognized as an important element in the so-called character disorders that have absorbed much of the clinical attention once given to hysteria and obsessional neuroses. A new theory of narcissism has developed, grounded in Freud’s well-known essay on the subject (which treats narcissism - libidinal investment of the self - as a necessary precondition of object love) but devoted not to primary narcissism but to secondary or pathological narcissism: the incorporation of grandiose object images as a defense against anxiety and guilt. Both types of narcissism blur the boundaries between the self and the world of objects, but there is an important difference between them. The newborn infant - the primary narcissist - does not yet perceive his mother as having an existence separate from his own, and he therefore mistakes dependence on the mother, who satisfies his needs as soon as they arise, with his own omnipotence. “It takes several weeks of postnatal development…before the infant perceives that the source of his need…is within and the source of gratification is outside the self.”
Secondary narcissism, on the other hand, “attempts to annul the pain of disappointed [object] love” and to nullify the child’s rage against those who do not respond immediately to his needs; against those who are now seen to respond to others besides the child and who therefore appear to have abandoned him. Pathological narcissism, “which cannot be considered simply a fixation at the level of normal primitive narcissism,” arises only when the ego has developed to the point of distinguishing itself from surrounding objects. If the child for some reason experiences this separation trauma with special intensity, he may attempt to reestablish earlier relationships by creating in his fantasies an omnipotent mother or father who merges with images of his own self. “Through internalization the patient seeks to recreate a wished-for love relationship which may once have existed and simultaneously to annul the anxiety and guilt aroused by aggressive drives directed against the frustrating and disappointing object.”
Narcissism in Recent Clinical Literature
The shifting emphasis in clinical studies from primary to secondary narcissism reflects both the shift in psychoanalytic theory from study of the id to study of the ego and a change in the type of patients seeking psychiatric treatment. Indeed the shift from a psychology of instincts to ego psychology itself grew partly out of a recognition that the patients who began to present themselves for treatment in the 1940s and 1950s “very seldom resembled the classical neuroses Freud described so thoroughly.” In the last twenty-five years, the borderline patient, who confronts the psychiatrist not with well-defined symptoms but with diffuse dissatisfactions, has become increasingly common. He does not suffer from debilitating fixations or phobias or from the conversion of repressed sexual energy into nervous ailments; instead he complains “of vague, diffuse dissatisfactions with life” and feels his “amorphous existence to be futile and purposeless.” He describes “subtly experienced yet pervasive feelings of emptiness and depression,” “violent oscillations of self-esteem,” and “a general inability to get along.” He gains “a sense of heightened self-esteem only by attaching himself to strong, admired figures whose acceptance he craves and by whom he needs to feel supported.” Although he carries out his daily responsibilities and even achieves distinction, happiness eludes him, and life frequently strikes him as not worth living.
Psychoanalysis, a therapy that grew out of experience with severely repressed and morally rigid individuals who needed to come to terms with a rigorous inner “censor,” today finds itself confronted more and more often with a “chaotic and impulse-ridden character.” It must deal with patients who “act out” their conflicts instead of repressing or sublimating them. These patients, though often ingratiating, tend to cultivate a protective shallowness in emotional relations. They lack the capacity to mourn, because the intensity of their rage against lost love objects, in particular against their parents, prevents their reliving happy experiences or treasuring them in memory. Sexually promiscuous rather than repressed, they nevertheless find it difficult to “elaborate the sexual impulse” or to approach sex in the spirit of play. They avoid close involvements, which might release intense feelings of rage. Their personalities consist largely of defenses against this rage and against feelings of oral deprivation that originate in the pre-Oedipal stage of psychic development.
Often these patients suffer from hypochondria and complain of a sense of inner emptiness. At the same time they entertain fantasies of omnipotence and a strong belief in their right to exploit others and be gratified. Archaic, punitive, and sadistic elements predominate in the superegos of these patients, and they conform to social rules more out of fear of punishment than from a sense of guilt. They experience their own needs and appetites, suffused with rage, as deeply dangerous, and they throw up defenses that are as primitive as the desires they seek to stifle.
On the principle that pathology represents a heightened version of normality, the “pathological narcissism” found in character disorders of this type should tell us something about narcissism as a social phenomenon. Studies of personality disorders that occupy the border line between neurosis and psychosis, though written for clinicians and making no claims to shed light on social or cultural issues, depict a type of personality that ought to be immediately recognizable, in a more subdued form, to observers of the contemporary cultural scene: facile at managing the impressions he gives to others, ravenous for admiration but contemptuous of those he manipulates into providing it; unappeasably hungry for emotional experiences with which to fill an inner void; terrified of again and death.
The most convincing explanations of the psychic origins of this borderline syndrome draw on the theoretical tradition established by Melanie Klein. In her psychoanalytic investigations of children, Klein discovered that early feelings of overpowering rage, directed especially against the mother and secondarily against the internalized image of the mother as a ravenous monster, make it impossible for the child to synthesize “good” and “bad” parental images. In his fear of aggression from the bad parents - projections of his own rage - he idealizes the good parents who will come to the rescue.
Internalized images of others, buried in the unconscious mind at an early age, become self-images as well. If later experience fails to qualify or to introduce elements of reality into the child’s archaic fantasies about his parents, he finds it difficult to distinguish between images of the self and of the objects outside the self. These images fuse to form a defense against the bad representation of the self and of objects, similarly fused in the form of a harsh, punishing superego. Melanie Klein analyzed a ten-year-old boy who unconsciously thought of his mother as a “vampire” or “horrid bird” and internalized this fear as hypochondria. He was afraid that the bad presences inside him would devour the good ones. The rigid separation of good and bad images of the self and of objects, on the one hand, and the fusion of self- and object images on the other, arose from the boy’s inability to tolerate ambivalence or anxiety. Because his anger was so intense, he could not admit that he harbored aggressive feelings toward those he loved. “Fear and guilt relating to his destructive phantasies moulded his whole emotional life.”
A child who feels so gravely threatened by his own aggressive feelings (projected onto others and then internalized again as inner “monsters”) attempts to compensate himself for his experience of rage and envy with fantasies of wealth, beauty, and omnipotence. These fantasies, together with the internalized images of the good parents with which he attempt to defend himself, become the core of a “grandiose conception of the self.” A kind of “blind optimism,” according to Otto Kernberg, protects the narcissistic child from the dangers around and within him - particularly from dependence on others, who are perceived as without exception undependable. “Constant projection of ‘all bad’ self and object images perpetuates a world of dangerous, threatening objects, against which the ‘all good’ self images are used defensively, and megalomanic ideal self images are built up.” The splitting of images determined by aggressive feelings from images that derive from libidinal impulses makes it impossible for the child to acknowledge his own aggression, to experience guilt or concern for objects invested simultaneously with aggression and libido, or to mourn for lost objects. Depression in narcissistic patients takes the form not of mourning with its admixture of guilt, described by Freud in “Mourning and Melancholia,” but of impotent rage and “feelings of defeat by external forces.”
Because the intrapsychic world of these patients is so thinly populated - consisting only of the “grandiose self,” in Kernberg’s words, “the devalued, shadowy images of self and others, and potential persecutors” - they experience intense feelings of emptiness and inauthenticity. Although the narcissist can function in the everyday world and often charms other people (not least with his “pseudo-insight into his personality”), his devaluation of others, together with his lack of curiosity about them, impoverishes his personal life and reinforces the “subjective experience of emptiness.” Lacking any real intellectual engagement with the world - notwithstanding a frequency inflated estimate of his own intellectual abilities - he has little capacity for sublimation. He therefore depends on others for constant infusions of approval and admiration. He “must attach [himself] to someone, living an almost parasitic” existence. At the same time, his fear of emotional dependence, together with his manipulative, exploitive approach to personal relations, makes these relations bland, superficial, and deeply unsatisfying. “The ideal relationship to me would be a two month relationship,” said a borderline patient. “That way there’d be no commitment. At the end of the two months I’d just break it off.”
Chronically bored, restlessly in search of instantaneous intimacy - of emotional titillation without involvement and dependence - the narcissist is promiscuous and often pansexual as well, since the fusion of pregenital and Oedipal impulses in the service of aggression encourages polymorphous perversity. The bad images he has internalized also make him chronically uneasy about his health, and hypochondria in turn gives him a special affinity for therapy and for therapeutic groups and movements.
As a psychiatric patient, the narcissist is a prime candidate for interminable analysis. He seeks in analysis a religion or way of life and hopes to find in the therapeutic relationship external support for his fantasies of omnipotence and eternal youth. The strength of his defenses, however, makes him resistant to successful analysis. The shallowness of his emotional life often prevents him from developing a close connection to the analyst, even though he “often uses his intellectual insight to agree verbally with the analyst and recapitulates in his own words what has been analysed in previous sessions.” He uses intellect in the service of evation rather than self-discovery, resorting to some of the same strategies of obfuscation that appear in the confessional writing of recent decades. “The patient uses the analytic interpretations but deprives them quickly of life and meaning, so that only meaningless words are left. The words are then felt to be the patient’s own pression, which he idealizes and which give him a sense of superiority.” Although psychiatrists no longer consider narcissistic disorders inherently unanalyzable, few of them take an optimistic view of the prospects for success.

According to Kernberg, the great argument for making the attempt at all, in the face of the many difficulties presented by narcissistic patients, is the devastating effect of narcissism on the second half of their lives - the certainty of the terrible suffering that lies in store. In a society that dreads old age and death, aging holds a special terror for those who fear dependence and whose self-esteem requires the admiration usually reserves for youth, beauty, celebrity, or charm. The usual defenses against the ravages of age - identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one’s immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past - can do nothing for the narcissist. Unable to derive whatever comfort comes from identification with historical continuity, he finds it impossible, on the contrary, “to accept the fact that a younger generation now possesses many of the previously cherished gratifications of beauty, wealth, power and, particularly, creativity. To be able to enjoy life in a process involving a growing identification with other people’s happiness and achievements is tragically beyond the capacity of narcissistic personalities.”

The 3 basic parameters of hashtag #Valzubiriagenda:

1. We artists and everyone else can write and self-publish art- and artist-related books: memoirs, biographies, art books and art catalogs. Books are forever. Pamphlets and brochures are not books.
2. We announce a schedule of increasing prices of our art pieces, which includes quantities (scarcity numbers) per price point and overall (the total quantity of art pieces we might ever make). This helps art traders, art investors and art collectors speculate or even stop speculating and instead join a community of investors working together to hopefully skyrocket to the higher announced prices in a shorter span of time.
3. We can use the NFT world, because NFTs provide the tracking (who owns what) and trading.

We can also not be involved with NFTs. Stores and individuals can help sell art using online presence and our catalogs in the stores. If this trends, or once this trends, even expensive art can be sold by neighboring businesses, without exclusivity. Commission systems do not have to be standardized. Art investors can produce their own catalogs to leave at the cafés. Even the cafés can produce their own catalogs.
Valzubiriagenda NFTs
NFTs only came about a few years ago. But I had been working on this since the 1990s. I wrote a book, Valzubiriagenda, along with fellow artist Silverio Perez, and released it in 2018 (Amazon and elsewhere), tackling everything related to #1 & #2. We'll come up with #3 in a later book/ memoi marketing book.
Any artist, including tangible artists can release 10,000 NFTs if the artist chooses to do so. For tangible artists, the NFT first becomes an Art Commission Contract for sight unseen, yet-to-be made art. Once the art is made, the NFT becomes proof of ownership that the actual, tangible art is theirs.
Warehousing our tangible art
Another related idea is that the tangible art may be warehoused by the artist so that the NFT traders continue to trade. This means that even 10-ton 10-foot tall sculptures can be owned and traded by anyone without worrying about shipping, reshipping, scratches, smudges, parts breaking off, etc. The newness of the pieces remain because they are stored by the artist, source, gallery, etc. The art piece gets shipped to the art collector, the ultimate owner.
An artist who makes ceramic coffee mugs - smaller art pieces, can release 10,000 NFTs with a schedule of increasing prices so that NFT traders can trade immediately. The 10,000 coffee mugs can get damaged, so as they are made, they continue to be stored by the artist, until the time when art collectors decide to have the art pieces shipped to them.
Why only now?
I decided to write as many book-length memoirs as I can before I came out to promote this.
I'm an artist and an author. Both need time to "master." I would not even fully use "master" on myself, because there's always something new, even to my own art, my own writing and publishing.

I am now claiming that I'm the visual artist who has produced the most artist memoirs in the world. I have 5 on Amazon. I count Valzubiriagenda as both a marketing book and a memoir-of-sorts, because it has a lot of my own life lessons on writing and publishing. I would not care to contest my claim of having the most memoirs. I will release 5 more over the next 3 years.

BARTER! Get help to write, photograph art and publish your books!
Anyone can hire 11 ghostwriters for 11 memoirs. If you can make art, but you cannot write, then barter your forever art with those who can help you produce forever books.
I don't feel the pressure of writing and publishing because I feel my focus should be on art students and art experts who would study my art and my books 100 years from now. Don't expect relatives and friends to read your books.
I call myself the Dollman
For my NFTs, I am proposing to make dioramas - my original, costumed, bejeweled porcelain dolls in backdrops that will also have precious metals and gemstones. This way I can incorporate precious metals and gemstones in my work, to make sure that people perceive my art as expensive, just in case I myself don't become "famous" - there's no need to get world famous. We are artists and all we need to do is to satisfy the art niche.
Use your laptop now!
I will encourage you to start writing your book-length memoir. Write, Edit and then Self-publish it. Get help. Why wait a hundred years for someone to write about you when all you need is a laptop and a nearby coffee shop.
Don't start counting chickens before the eggs hatch. I have encountered a lot of would-be writers who immediately see themselves as bestselling. world famous assets to society. Two even wanted me to sign NDAs (Nondisclosure agreements), because they did not want me to steal their book ideas.
Here's a suggestion. I would not personally do it. From one manuscript can come 2 books: The Original Draft (unedited, with misspellings, considered to be an art piece, scanned pages(?) of your handwritten original effort), and The Final Edition (edited).
PROVENANCE!
Another way to enhance our investability, tradability and collectability is PROVENANCE - how art ownership proceeds through time. The way this can be done is also through publishing books. Everyone can write their memoirs, biographies, art books and art catalogs, including traders, investors and art collectors. In effect, we artists can continue to be included or mentioned in even more books, without any additional effort by us.
You as an investor, reseller, trader, art collector should be able to publish a catalog with 250 works by 250 different artists, but they need to agree to this right from the start - it's your money, you should require them to follow your version of the hashtag #valzubiriagenda parameters, which preferably should include permission for you to publish their art. Why would you track down 250 artists later?
No exclusive contracts
If you're a café, you can call for artists, and come up with a book with for example, 30 artists, with a chapter devoted to each artist's profile and images of the artist's art.
You can distribute your catalogs to businesses and individuals near and far and online.
The book Valzubiriagenda even cites that funeral homes and janitors closets can sell art, with or without exclusivity. Airline catalogs can include million dollar art pieces. Car manufacturers, showrooms and even car repair shops can sell art as well. Everyone should be able to do this, anywhere in the world, especially not just because of the pandemic, but right now, we are in really bad economies.
What's with the name #Valzubiriagenda
I was into conspiracy theories in 2018, and this term, "The Mandela Effect," was popular. I had read many times that an artist coined the term, but I had to research online, for her name, many times, before remembering it. I'm not good at remembering names. It took me a year and a half to finally tell you that Fiona Broome coined "The Mandela Effect."
I also thought I might have to research trademarks and copyrights just to come up with a generic name. So I decided on "Valzubiriagenda." I was not really sure at first, but I decided to use it as the title for my book (with co-authoartist Silverio Perez) so that there would be no turning back and I can move on.
Am I a FUTURIST?
Someone I recently met this May 2022 just called me a futurist.
In the 1990s, I proposed to a pension fund that they can raise billions of dollars, especially for emergencies, or as needed, or out of desperation, if the pension fund purchases a quantity of art from an artist who not only has a current, reasonable price, but an announced future price that the artist wants to reach.
That future price would obviously be higher than the current price. The art commission contract for multiple art pieces can be taken to the fund's financial lender for a loan. The higher future price can be used for financing purposes.
The pension fund's treasurer, a publicly elected official, said this idea might work, but we had to keep this a secret and discuss this some more, because other pension funds might copy and do this prematurely. This idea had to come from the two of us. The treasurer needed his votes and I needed credentials.
Added into the pot was my idea that I, as the artist, will also write one book-length artist memoir. This was and still is a strong factor, because the leadership and marketing books I had read then mentioned a strong tip. If you want to advance in your field, write a full-length book that is related to the field.
Unfortunately, the elected official, the treasurer of the pension fund, who was also a friend, passed away - he was old and had ailments. At that point in time, I cannot just approach another pension fund treasurer to share this idea with.
I realized I had to write a few memoirs. I needed to set an example for other artists, so I needed to write more than one memoir. Then I felt I should also make ready another book - the how-to of what I'm up to. I wrote Valzubiriagenda, which was a memoir of sorts. I knew how long it would take me to write a book, so I had to make sure I can also consider this book a memoir.
In 2008, I imagined that someone like Bernie Madoff, or a fund like Lehman Brothers, would be desperate enough to use this to save themselves and their companies. I was not ready. I had only written 1 manuscript for a memoir.
In 2012, I released Dollman the Musical, A Memoir of an Artist as a Dollmaker. Once again, I was not ready because writing it depressed me a little, and I knew I had to write more.
In 2014, I released 3 memoirs, and re-released Dollman the Musical. Besides releasing regular books, I released special editions of the 4 books, which had a "Special Secret Insert for Bankers," which explains my ideas of an announced schedule of exponentially increasing prices, to satisfy investors, and the publication of artist memoirs, to satisfy art collectors.
In 2014, I also issued out a press release. Google "Can Billion Dollar Artist Save Investors and World Economy Valentino Zubiri PRWeb August 19 2014" and you will see the press release.
What I did was stake a claim on my ideas. I did not promote my books and the press release. I just wanted them to stay online, like a sleeping giant or a dormant volcano. I even designed 3 of the book covers to look like indie books from the 1980s. I was planting the seeds, thinking they will eventually grow and bear fruit in the future.
In 2015, I was interviewed by Richard Syrett, about one of my memoirs, Hocus Pocus Lately. This book is my memoir with paranormal stories. I could have pursued promoting my paranormal stories, but I wanted to be known first as a visual artist and memoirist, so I allowed myself one interview related to Hocus Pocus Lately. Richard Syrett has(had?) his own syndicated radio show, The Conspiracy Show with Richard Syrett, about the paranormal. He also guest hosts on Coast to Coast AM, another internationally syndicated show about the paranormal.
In 2018, I released Valzubiriagenda (co-authored by artist Silverio Perez, a fellow artist). Finally, this book is "the how-to of what I'm to."
I'm going to end this with some strangeness. In 1986, a lady at a religious gathering went into a trance and left a good number of messages. Supposedly, anyone who got into a trance would have messages, but once the trance was over, the person would not remember what was said.
I was not part of the group, but the lady turned her head to face me. She "foretold" that whatever I would decide to do in the future, it will take time, but it will be the right thing. This is one of my stories in one of my memoirs, Hocus Pocus Lately.
The Tulipmania of 1634-37
I discovered that there was this incident of rare tulips becoming collectible during the Dutch Golden Age. There were tulips so rare and so well-desired that their prices equaled to that of a house. You can read more about this online (Wikipedia) or watch a few YouTube videos about it.
Here is the most useful idea that I gleaned from the Tulipmania. The tulip bulbs remained safe inside nurseries. The traders were carrying the deeds of ownership to the tulip bulbs.
Then NFTs came to the forefront
I started learning PHP, an HTML scripting language, and MySQL, the database that PHP can connect to in the background, in 1999, when there were only 3 books about PHP and MySQL at the bookstores.
By 2014, I was trying to figure out how to make the "ledger," or database that can be used to update ownership and who can be contacted. If we are trading art, then the art ownership should be updated.
Then NFTs came about. This can be used as our ledger. Everyone can immediately trade NFTs of future, yet-to-be made art pieces, especially because it takes time to make tangible art.
NFTs actually went a step ahead, by allowing digital art to be traded.
The only setback with NFTs, in my opinion, is that it still lacks a commission system for resellers and representatives.
For example, if a café wants to represent me, then they can promote me at their café and on their online pages. If I make one piece of art that will be exclusively represented by a gallery, then that commission will be different and more specific. As ownership is transferred, the subsequent owners should be able to reset the commission. We should also have the option of giving commissions to hundreds of representatives at one time with different percentages if need be.
The recent crypto crash
Lately, we have observed that NFTs and cryptocurrencies have been behaving like the stock market and other markets. They have been fluctuating.
I believe that it is time for a trend which discourages fluctuation of prices.
I have also seen YouTube videos where social influencers are encouraging us to be on the lookout for exponentially profitable ventures, because we have all seen this happen with the exponential increase of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Let's see if #Valzubiriagenda trends
We can announce present and future art prices. The galleries won't do this (yet?) because they follow a more traditional approach to the business of art.
We have a choice of using incrementally or exponentially increasing prices. We still reserve the right to change things in the future, so everyone should know to follow the latest update.
If this trends, if you as an artist simply announces that you will write an artist memoir, or that you will include the future works in future art books, you might have more art traders, investors and collectors approaching you.
Get your pen, paper and calculator
Imagine yourself as an artist, where you are right now. Let's just say you still do not have a book about yourself and your art yet. Imagine now that you have a memoir out there. Don't you think it makes sense to charge more than what you are charging now? Writing and publishing books is just the beginning. I'm just standardizing this approach. The books also say to do other related projects. In my case, getting Dollman the Musical onstage is one idea. You will have other related projects, but the publication of memoirs, biographies, art books and art catalogs will help all of us.
You can also imagine that a law firm that has meeting rooms, with someone who wants to form a local #valzubiriagenda group, can have meetings. A local café can do the same. Local photographers for your art, writers, editors, book designers, proofreaders and others can join in.
I suggest have printed books to share. 15 copies of your memoir or art books will be better than an e-reader or laptop or your phone to show. These gadgets can be stolen, sabotaged, broken, have coffee spilled on them, etc. 15 printed books means simultaneously showing to 15 people. You can even give them away to potential resellers, investors, traders and collectors.
When it rains, it pours, as in the days of Noah
There's a saying, "When it rains, it pours." There is a negative interpretation and a positive interpretation.
Negative: When trouble comes, they cascade to even more.
Positive: When opportunity comes knocking, more follow suit. We can assume that if one gets our art because of #valzubiriagenda, more want to do it now, because of the rising prices, and FOMO - fear of missing out. What will they lose if they miss the boat?
As I have said earlier, if the #valzubiriagenda trends, if you announce a future memoir or art catalog, you might have an increase of investors, traders and art collectors who would want to check you out. You might encourage more sales. Just remember to write and publish that memoir and art catalog.
There's this saying, "As in the days of Noah." Imagine Noah, building his ark, with members of his own family, putting all his time and effort into it. Noah was a nice guy. I'm sure every once in a while a neighbor offered him coffee, or chai latte, or whatever refreshing drink they might have back then.
Here's the lesson to be learned. Just because they offered him some type of bubble tea drink, or coca cola, they still didn't make it to the ark. Rubbing shoulders with actors does not make you an actor. I have told my artist friends to write their memoirs. They told me that once they see me succeed, after all these many years of seeing my seemingly useless efforts, then they will write their memoirs and follow the road that I had paved for them.
Good luck to them, but if I were you, act now, get my art or make art. Support the 5-year old artist whose parent promised to release a comprehensive art catalog. If you get that 5-year old's art, and mine, I would be honored to be in the same art catalog that you will produce. I'm already successful at that point. You have gotten the mission just right.
I have already claimed to have written the most book-length artist memoirs in the world. Dethrone that claim. Barter. Use ghostwriters. Success to me means facing God one day and saying, I wrote my memoirs and left the world a legacy of books and art. I will not tell God, smiling and proudly, that I encouraged a run for my art by announcing a schedule of exponentially increasing prices that reached 9 figures. I'm sure God knows we had fun.

JOIN THIS GROUP

If you want to try out #valzubiriagenda, in any capacity, join this group. Let others know about this group as well.
If you are an artist, you can let everyone know here that you will produce your memoir, art catalogs, etc. It's okay if you don't know how to go about publishing yet, I will discuss this. Please be honorable enough to produce what you promise to produce.
If you want to meet fellow artists, investors, resellers, etc., join us here.
If you are a book writer, editor, proofreader; if you can photograph art pieces; if you are a book designer, etc., join us here. Let us know if you charge, barter for art, or both.
If you have your own tips and knowledge to share, join us here.
If you have underaged artists you are managing (parents, etc.) join us here.
Join this group if you want to sell works. Post your works. You web links. I'm sure I will.
You can announce meetings in your area. You might have meeting rooms, a café, restaurant, etc. where people can meet. In the future, you can have the regular show and tell, where books can be shown and shared.
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Thanks for reading. Please let me know if I need to edit some parts. Please share and join this group. - Valentino Zubiri, Dollman, Artist, Memoirist
Underaged artists are welcome here, so please be mindful of your language. We cannot post your adult-oriented art pieces, but you can direct us to a separate page or community. There will be limits to your posts, and there will be adult-oriented art that we cannot allow to be posted.
Thanks for reading. Please let me know if I need to edit some parts. Please share and join this group. - Valentino Zubiri, Dollman, artist & memoirist

I am looking to start self studying history because I just finished APEuro and I loved it. I am looking for some history books that not only dive into to a good deal of the economic, artistic (I love art history whether it is paintings, sculptures, music, or architecture), social, political, and some religious (like the Protestant rev, 30 years war, ect) but also dive into people’s lives. For example I loved reading about Lady Grey Jane too a Danish serf. And I want to learn about anything anywhere before 1950ish. The problem is I get really bored with the fancy writing most textbooks have and I am really bad at reading poems and books (like biographies) in older English which sorta puts me in a tough spot. I am down for a book/textbook or tv show or movies but I don’t want something that is historical fiction, I want to focus on what really happened in history. Sorry for the whole essay but finding a good way to learn is hard :).

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Old Scheduled Q&A Threads

New to Neville's teachings? Start here!

The below links contain essentially the entirety of Neville's teachings.

• Wiki
• Sidebar
• Neville Goddard's Brief Biography
• Rules

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I manifest xyz?

Yes, anything is possible.

How do I manifest xyz?

All manifestations use the same technique(s). To get good simply takes practice and imagination.
Neville's Basic Manifestation Techniques:

• The Neville Goddard Method
• Revision: The Complete Guide

What scene should I choose?

Any scene which you believe you would encounter after your wish is fulfilled.

What should I start reading?

We recommend The Law and The Promise or The Power of Awareness first for beginners. This is because Neville includes several examples and success stories from students, in addition to being lighter on Bible references, which can be off-putting or confusing to beginners.
If you want a physical copy of his books, publishers continue publishing new copies of Neville's works. Please check your library, locally owned book store, or search online for Neville's works. If you purchase a new physical copy, we recommend The Power of Imagination: The Neville Goddard Treasury, as it contains all of Neville's books in one volume.
All of Neville’s books and lectures are in the public domain and can be searched online for free, and are included in the Wiki and Sidebar links mentioned previously.

What is an SP?

Specific Person. Usually in reference to a person’s romantic interest or crush. The term was popularized by so-called, self-professed online manifestation coaches and "experts". /NevilleGoddardSP is a dedicated, expert subreddit for that.

What is a Mental Diet?

Avoiding negative conversation and media, paying attention to positive conversation and media.

What is SATS?

State Akin To Sleep (SATS) refers to the deep state of consciousness during meditation or just before falling asleep. In SATS, the body is relaxed, but control over the mind is retained. It is used to create vivid visualizations in imagination for the purposes of manifesting.

After you have decided on the action which implies that your desire has been realized, then sit in your nice comfortable chair or lie flat on your back, close your eyes for the simple reason it helps to induce this state that borders on sleep. The minute you feel this lovely drowsy state, or the feeling of gathered togetherness, wherein you feel- I could move if I wanted to, but I do not want to, I could open my eyes if I wanted to, but I do not want to. When you get that feeling you can be quite sure that you are in the perfect state to pray successfully.
Neville Goddard, 1948 Lecture Series, Lesson 4

What is the Lullaby Method?

In SATS, instead of visualizing, repeat an affirmation to oneself again and again, building the feeling of it being true.

What is Revision?

Revision is revising in imagination events that have happened in the past as a way of mitigating their effects in the future.
See also: Revision: The Complete Guide

What is Door Slamming/You are in Barbados/Living in the End/State of the Wish Fulfilled?

Closing your mind to any other possibility besides your outcome. Assuming your desire is true and not questioning it.

Do we have Free Will?

Yes, and no. It’s complicated. See here.

What is "Everyone is You Pushed Out" (EIYPO)?

On a practical level, what you believe is what you get. The world only shows you your own beliefs. On a metaphysical level, we are all the same God interacting with Itself through an infinite number of different points.

The whole vast world is no more than man's imagining pushed out. I must qualify that by saying that the world outside of man is dead, but Man is a living soul, and it responds to man, yet man is sound asleep and does not know it. The Lord God placed man in a profound sleep, and as he sleeps the world responds as in a dream, for Man does not know he is asleep, and then he moves from a state of sleep where he is only a living soul to an awakened state where he is a life-giving Spirit. And now he can himself create, for everything is responding to an activity in man which is Imagination. "The eternal body of man is all imagination; that is God himself." (Blake)
Neville Goddard, The Law lecture

What if everything is going wrong? What if I am manifesting the opposite of my desire?

Failure is generally due to a lack of consistent faith or belief in the outcome, not feeling as though it had already happened. However, if the one has consistently been loyal to their faith, then we are reminded that all manifestations have their appointed hour (Hab 2:3). Neville writes about the causes of failure here.

What about (my sick mom, my crazy grandpa, the homeless, starving children, etc.)?

In Neville's view, there is one being that is God (who is pure imagination), and has split Itself into infinite smaller forms to undergo a series of good/bad experiences across lifetimes until these smaller pieces realize they are God and reintegrate. The less fortunate are to be helped, not looked down upon, but understanding it is necessary for God to realize Itself (to experience bad and good).

What happens after I die? What is The Promise?

Neville’s prophetic vision of an individual’s reintegration with God.

Can I manifest multiple things at once?

Yes. Here is Neville's answer regarding how to manifest multiple things from Lessons Q&A:

\5. Question: Is it possible to imagine several things at the same time, or should I confine my imagining to one desire?
Answer: Personally I like to confine my imaginal act to a single thought, but that does not mean I will stop there. During the course of a day I may imagine many things, but instead of imagining lots of small things, I would suggest that you imagine something so big it includes all the little things. Instead of imagining wealth, health and friends, imagine being ecstatic. You could not be ecstatic and be in pain. You could not be ecstatic and be threatened with a dispossession notice. You could not be ecstatic if you were not enjoying a full measure of friendship and love.
What would the feeling be like were you ecstatic without knowing what had happened to produce your ecstasy? Reduce the idea of ecstasy to the single sensation, "Isn't it wonderful!" Do not allow the conscious, reasoning mind to ask why, because if it does it will start to look for visible causes, and then the sensation will be lost. Rather, repeat over and over again, "Isn't it wonderful!" Suspend judgment as to what is wonderful. Catch the one sensation of the wonder of it all and things will happen to bear witness to the truth of this sensation. And I promise you, it will include all the little things.

What if I have another question?

Please use Reddit's search feature or post it here in the Q&A thread.

Some examples of what I've used it for:
My kids love to play a game where I imagine something silly and I ask DALL-E or Midjourney to generate an image and then they use the image as inspiration and they draw and color the silly thing.
My kids often ask for made up story time in place of books at bedtime. My wife is quite good at this and I do a serviceable job but find it pretty difficult to have any significant plot happen. I'm much more about describing a scene, dialog, etc., which in the context of a 10 minute bedtime story leads to the whole thing basically being all the characters meeting each other and then it's time to sleep. Terrible. I prompt ChatGPT to provide 10, one-sentence plot points to a story for kindergarteners about [insert idea here] and it does and then I just elaborate on each of those and it makes it easy to keep the story stepping.
I asked ChatGPT to provide a biography of 30 significant women from history written in the style of a storybook for kindergarteners and read them one per day to my daughter during the month of March.
I've got the ChatGPT app on my phone and whenever my kids ask why about something or how about something I don't have an answer for, I can just hit the microphone button and repeat their question in the form of a decent prompt specifying that the answer should be written for young children and normally get a good answer.
Basically, whenever you have an idea of something to do for your kids, try to make it a habit to immediately start it with generative AI. Do that instead of thinking "I'll do that later." It's a labor saver and takes a little idea that before would have passed into nothing because you don't have time, and makes it into a plus in your kid's day.

So, during the Bastard's case (ain wanna call him human name, bloody fvcker), we all have seen that Abay's Қара Сөздері were used by both sides during final-debates to validate their positions (not discussing the quality of implementation), and that seemed to me as if they were citing the holy script.
It is, of course, not serious statement or anything, just an entertaining thought to tinker with before the bed or at 3am table with a friend.
It has like everything you need, only time's a question:
The Figure who is treated as Teaching figure/Holy figure? Check ✅. Holy script? Check ✅ (a few of Abay's own өлеңдер and Қара Сөздері specifically). Full (quite artistically tinkered) biography treated as national treasure? Check ✅ (Epic of Abay, "Abay's Path"). And everybody treat the main figure as prime example of perfectivity or the Polaris? CHECK ✅. Abay is heavily depersonified, and everybody try to use his skin as the cover for their own moral, political values and beliefs. And people are capable of committing mental gymnastics to "fix him" into perfectivity. And it is not so often to criticise him: I mean, even the "Ойға түстім толғандым" (with which we will leave it out if it's actually written by him or not, since we are talking about the ones who already accept it as his own work), with its first person point of view, where main character has self-doubts and criticisms of what he committed, cannot be even hypothetically be read as about Abay, but somebody other! (Usually Abay's contemporaries). Isn't it like fascinating?, also, quite depressing, because, it's literally killing his heritage to shape it into the Legend of put your option here
And, the little additional point at the end: Noticed how I specified in parenthesis that "Abay's Path" was "artistically tinkered"? Now, could you see somebody attacking this specific phrasing or lining it as "Yes, the epic was a little bit artistically tinkered, but otherwise it's very truthful to reality, and all main events and characters are kept to the core"? When it was written decades after Abay's death by somebody to whom he was a legendary figure from his Grandfather's tales. I mean, even these last words about Mukhtar and his relation to Abay are gonna make me look potentially "dumb", "надан" and "uneducated", at least, in modern school (maybe quite justified, considering it is a hyperbola)
Abay was deconstructed literally by everybody; the government, зиялылар, politicians, scientists, artists and so on did that, to then revive him as their Jesus. Whatcha think?
(Waiting for when Sufis will make him their Пірі, Christians put him into purgatory by Dante and people giving their oath with hand on "Қара Сөздері жинағы" 😎)

I wanted to pay tribute to my absolute favorite ancient Rome historian, Karl Galinsky (February 7, 1942 – March 9, 2024). He was a professor at the University of Texas in Austin. He was considered one of the foremost experts on Augustan Rome. I wanted to write briefly what I love about his writing and history, and why I prefer his work on Augustus above anyone else’s.
I’ve read a veritable mini-library on Augustus. His principate and life is my favorite period in Roman history. In a great deal of these books, there is this pervading cynicism about Augustus that no doubt stems from Tacitus and Sir Ronald Syme. Both of these legendary historians wrote about Augustus with a heavily biased lens. Tacitus wrote from the perspective of an optimate who valued the libertas of a small faction, the Roman oligarchy. Galinsky writes, “Libertas has both an active and passive meaning. It could mean freedom to do something actively, or it can be the freedom from something or someone. Tacitus and Cicero reflect on this matter, they espouse the former (active freedom). But of course, they are extremely biased and are purely referring to senatorial freedom and not the people’s.” Sir Ronald Syme, and understandably so, wrote from the perspective of a historian in the late 30’s, amid encroaching totalitarian dictators. Mussolini revived Augustus’ reign and Augustus was depicted as the “godfather of European dictators.” Galinsky writes, “After Mussolini, for instance, effectively usurped the Augustan era for Fascism, the association stuck for decades, and scholars were reluctant to say anything positive about Augustus so as not to appear as sympathizers.”
Andrew Wallace-Hadrill in Augustan Rome writes, “The fact that Mussolini (and even to some degree Hitler) made use of Augustus as a supposed model had a strong and largely negative impact on the reception of Augustus in the post-fascist period. Sir Ronald Syme's devastating account of Augustus in The Roman Revolution (1939) made plain a lack of sympathy for a figure who, having been deployed as a model for fascist dictators, started to look like one. Even Maecenas came to look like Hitler's minister of information, Goebbels, in manipulating public opinion. Half a century after the fall of fascism, more nuanced viewpoints became possible.”
And indeed, more than half a century after the fall of fascism, more nuanced viewpoints became to emerge and the pinnacle of this newer, fresher, and less biased reception of Augustus is that of Karl Galinsky. Galinsky praises Augustus as someone who only adversely affected the senatorial oligarchy in his reign. He was a necessary monarch and most importantly, the monarch of all, and not just of the select few oligarchs. Similar to Jochen Bleicken’s assessment of Augustus (by the way, Bleicken’s biography of Augustus is the best out there), they both view Augustus as - along with Alexander the Great - the most important figure of antiquity in western civilization. Below, I wanted to provide some of my favorite passages from two of Professor Galinsky’s books. One is Augustus: An Introduction to the Life of an Emperor, and the second one is my all-time favorite book, Augustan Culture. I will provide page numbers for each passage.

Augustus: Introduction to the Life of an Emperor

“Augustus, then, did not “restore the constitution of the Republic” but rather “restored constitutional government” (Scheid 2007, 89). And it is good to question how many people really wished for a return of that Republic with all its instability, aristocratic jockeying for power, and the government’s neglect of the basic needs of people such as the ability to pursue happiness, domestic tranquility, and a productive life for themselves and their families. Hence, as Dio reports on that occasion (53.11.2), there were members of the senate “who abhorred the republican constitution as a breeder of strife, were pleased at the change in government, and took delight in Caesar.” If that was true of senators, it was all the more true of the vast majority of Italians. They were not interested in the politics of the capital, by which they were deeply affected but in which they could not participate unless they went to Rome and voted there. The libertas they welcomed was not the liberty to engage in cliquish competition for status, and office in Rome but freedom from the effects of discord, factionalism, and hardships that system had produced. Hence the end of the Res Gestae echoes its beginning where Augustus proclaimed to have liberated the republic from the tyranny of a faction. From all this, yet another reason emerges why Augustus wanted to “restore” the republican system: precisely as a constant reminder of its built-in weakness and risks. The republic, without a strong leader, was not the way most people wanted to be governed; there was no nostalgia for its excesses and the economic and political havoc that had resulted. If the system was to work again it required an Augustus. Leaving it to its own devices was a guarantee to return to the bad old days.” (68)”
"Now “having power over all things,” did Augustus exercise power for its own sake, or did he use it as the means to an end? The answer is, quite unambiguously, the latter." (82)
"How Augustus governed: His personal imprint clearly was discernible, but, quite typically, was not the result of a constant series of executive orders. Such steps were rare. An example is edicts which addressed a number of concerns that had been directed to his attentions by non-Romans in Cyrene: he decreed that Roman citizens should be subject to local laws and that in trials involving Greeks half the jury should be Greek. Similarly, he interfered little in the affairs of the towns in Italy, which numbered around 400. Road building was a priority to tie the empire together just on a material level, and imperial officials were put in charge of the task. But, as we know from what happened in Italy, they had to work though local authorities and contractors. The emperor would not have it otherwise, and balanced approaches like these characterize his style of governing. In short, Augustus was an involved ruler. There was constant communication and consultation rather than intervention. He tapped into existing networks and structures but provided a sense of direction." (164)
"For most people around the Mediterranean, the end of ruinous wars and a return to normal life, domestic tranquility, and some material security would have been enough. If it took a monarch to guarantee these basic blessings, so be it. At least he was “the monarch of everybody” (Momigliano 1940, 80) instead of being interested only in the welfare of a small clique; of course, that monarch should not be a paranoid dictator or bloodthirsty tyrant, either. A return to “laws and rights” would have sufficed, but other frameworks were available besides the republican constitution, which had not been up to the task. The converse parameter for Octavian was that, no, he was not about to give up his power but would try to exercise it in a way that was acceptable to most." (182)
"The other quality that allowed Augustus to achieve all he did was his capacity to grow. Conquest and warring down the enemy was one thing; effectively governing the resulting reign was another – here is where Augustus saw the biggest difference between himself and his model Alexander. Given the generally static view of character in Greco-Roman antiquity, his development after 30 BC was not to be expected, and some understandable mistrust kept lingering. This change should not be rendered simplistically with phrases like “a kinder, gentler Augustus” and similarly reductive characterizations. He still was the same man with the same steely determination. But he saw the task he was facing now, and the way he chose to engage it, required qualities beyond those that had been in evidence. He addressed the problems that had been neglected, and he planned for the long term and not just for his own gain. The way he and his advisers went about this with hard work, patience (we may recall his motto “make haste slowly”), fairness, and vision resonated. This was a ruler and leader one could respect." (185)

Augustan Culture

It was the self-interest of the senate and its neglect of the larger interests of the res publica that gave rise to the Gracchan unrest and undermined the senate’s own auctoritas: it became auctoritas in form, but not in essence. Auctoritas is not simply a given, but needs to be reacquired and validated. In that sense, it is part of the Augustan ethos that emphasized process and ongoing effort rather than fulfillment. On the political level this activity ultimately fell to Augustus. He did not usurp the auctoritas of the senate, but came to supersede it because of his ability to take the senate’s virtual unwillingness to solve the various long-standing problems that were afflicting the Roman state. Roman political practice was familiar with the role of the princeps and ‘auctor’ who would guide the senate and ensure stability and concord in the res publica. Augustus came to utilize that role to the fullest. (How Augustus saved Rome. Reasoning for Late Republic’s decline. 15)
Augustus led a moral revitalization and followed through on it; it was a time for rededicating the state to values, virtues, ideas, and ideals. Especially in the arts and literature, the phenomenon is more complex than mere “propaganda”. (on supposed “propaganda”. 20)
To calls coins propaganda is way too simple. It was a lot more nuanced than that. There is no evidence that indicates a pattern of control by the princeps himself. Barbara Levick has proposed that the coins do not produce a message from the emperor to his subjects, but rather are an offering of respect by the subjects to the emperor. (On coins and propaganda. 30)
Maecenas, in his pro-monarchic advice to Augustus, counseled him that “none of the cities should be allowed to have their own separate coinage… they should all be required to use ours” (Dio 52.30.9). Augustus neither did so nor did he need to; Auctoritas once more triumphed over potestas. (40)
The basic change under Augustus only affected the senatorial oligarchy adversely. On several occasions Cicero stresses the importance of preserving the appearance of popular freedom while keeping all the power in the hands of the leading citizens… expressed by Cicero’s spokesman, Scipio in The Republic (1.47-48): “The people hardly possess more freedom under an aristocracy any more than under a monarchy.” (55)
During the late republic, the common people were essentially double losers. They had no meaningful political freedom, nor were they freed from oppressive misery – economic, social, or political – caused by incessant party strife. The fact that a monarch who guaranteed them domestic tranquility and not the aristocracy, was irrelevant to them. At least he was a monarch of everyone instead of looking out only for the interests of a small clique as the senatorial regime had done in the name of its libertas. (55)

During the past few weeks there have been multiple articles on these subs speculating about “what could be so shocking” that it’s preventing insiders from disclosing the truth about NHIs and UFOs. I’ve recently posted some suggestions in comments on a couple of those discussions, but since the same basic question is regularly being asked, it may be helpful if I wrote a more detailed article with expanded responses. Hopefully this will be a constructive addition to the ongoing conversation.
If you take Lue Elizondo and David Grusch at their word - more from Grusch here – apparently it is a combination of the following:

• Our galaxy is ruled by a hierarchy of apex predators.
  
• Humans are recognised as fellow predators, but we're much lower down this hierarchy than we realise.
  
• The apex predators higher than us in the galactic hierarchy are more intelligent, far more technologically advanced and much older than humans.
  
• They may even be so powerful that they dominate multiple galaxies, not just the Milky Way.
  
• The scale of the difference in power and capabilities between these NHIs and humans would be a huge shock to our notions of our place in the universe. (Elizondo has said that this is the biggest issue that would cause a “sobering/sombre” reaction).
  
• None of the other species in the hierarchy are remotely human, either physically or psychologically. The psychological gulf in particular is causing problems for insiders, because of the difficulties it creates in accurately assessing the NHIs' motives & intentions towards us.
  
• Earth's governments don't currently have countermeasures to sufficiently protect the civilian human populace from abductions or any other kind of potentially malevolent targeting of humans.
  
• UAP behaviour towards our military installations, naval ships and fighter jets correlates with adversarial reconnaissance activities probing Earth’s defences and testing for weaknesses.
  

Those seem to be the main issues.
It's possible to extrapolate this. Some examples:
1. Earth’s position in a galactic superpower: I wrote a "deep dive" article last summer in an attempt to connect the dots, including a TL/DR summary at the start - with the potential explanation being that we're an isolated, backward species on a very minor planet within the territory of a huge superpower ruled by extremely intelligent apex predators.
2. Characteristics of the dominant NHIs: If they have occupied that position of supremacy for millions, tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of years because they’ve been able to out-smart and out-fight everyone else in this galaxy and potentially in multiple galaxies, consider the psychological and behavioural traits of NHI predators who have successfully achieved that level of dominance over that size of territory for that length of time.
3. Mankind’s low status in the hierarchy: Since we haven’t been wiped out yet, they aren't necessarily genocidal towards humans, although this may change if we ever try to do anything that potentially threatens their dominance and/or territorial integrity. In the meantime, the NHIs at the higher levels of the hierarchy may not care much about us because they regard us as comparatively inconsequential and very far beneath them (this also raises questions about whether they simply view us with indifference or actually domineering hostility, or even an utterly alien mindset that is incomprehensible to humans). But discovering the truth about our low status within the superpower, our comparative lack of autonomy, and the power difference between humans and the rulers would be a shock. Especially if the galactic hierarchy is rigid and strictly enforced. And it can be very difficult to defend yourself against a more powerful adversary who can completely violate your physical and psychological boundaries at will.
4. NHIs reinforcing the hierarchy: The reason the NHIs don’t make open contact to “admit humans into the galactic club” is not necessarily because of mankind’s various faults or our perceived “lack of readiness”. It could be due to much more selfish reasons: The NHIs above us in the galactic hierarchy (especially those at the very top) want to preserve their longstanding position of dominance and supremacy; so, they have no interest in helping humans "improve our position" in the hierarchy, and they may react very badly to any future attempts by us to unilaterally do so. They may even have been actively undermining human society and geopolitics on Earth in order to sabotage or delay any genuine progress and keep us permanently weaker than them; “divide and rule” is a very old strategy of subjugation and control.
5. Disclosure and threats: These NHIs may be actively preventing full public Disclosure by making threats against insiders/their families/their governments/their countries/Earth as a whole. An ignorant human populace is easier to manipulate and “keep in their place”. It also prevents us from contacting and forming alliances with other species in the galaxy who may occupy a similar low status in the hierarchy and object to the way they’re being treated (assuming that it’s even possible for us to overcome the psychological gulf and the resulting barriers to effective communication); another example of “divide and rule”.
6. Targeting of global infrastructure: There have been reports of NHI/UAP interference with Earth’s nuclear missiles, including the weapons systems being shut down. If NHIs really have been probing our military defences in order to test for weaknesses that they could potentially attack, they may also have been targeting other global infrastructure systems critical to modern human civilisation, such as our power grids, communication networks, and so on. It is worth investigating unexplained major incidents that have not been definitively attributed to foreign state actors or other hostile human sources.
7. Deep-rooted human reactions to carnivorous higher predators: It's possible that we would instinctively find the NHIs’ physical appearance to be horrific and/or terrifying, with the effect of automatically triggering an extreme and uncontrollable "fight/flight/freeze" response due to being in the presence of a "carnivorous higher predator". This could be another plausible explanation for the NHIs not revealing themselves and their alleged use of human hybrids, "grey pilots" etc as intermediaries instead.
8. Cloaked UAPs and NHIs: Finding out that our skies are full of cloaked UAPs and our streets and homes (day and night) include cloaked NHIs freely wandering around would also terrify many people.
9. NHIs disguised as humans: Elizondo has suggested that there are NHIs present on Earth disguised as humans. If this is true and it became public knowledge, it could trigger paranoia on a huge scale worldwide. It also raises questions about the specific activities of such disguised NHIs (eg. Geopolitical interference, scientific/anthropological curiosity, intelligence-gathering, refugees or fugitives).
10. Genetics: If NHIs did modify our prehistoric DNA, we may not be the first hominid species on Earth that they did this to. In fact, hominids may not be the only species from Earth that they did this to, especially if it involved one-way abductions in the distant past (ie. the animals and their "genetically uplifted" descendants were permanently taken off-world).
11. “Biologics”: Grusch has said the "biologics" that have allegedly been recovered come with some metaphorical "baggage". Possible explanation: The DNA of these pilots may be genetically-engineered and partially human, or based on another still-living or long-extinct species from Earth.
Confirmation that our galaxy is actually ruled by extremely powerful and technologically advanced NHIs would be startling for many people (although not necessarily such a surprise for those of us who are sci-fi fans), but that type of galactic geopolitical scenario does not automatically have disturbing implications for humans. However, multiple DoD and government insiders across the political spectrum - including public figures advocating for disclosure - have made statements indicating that there is indeed something very problematic about the situation. As this article suggests, perhaps it involves the way that spacefaring NHI species regard humans and, correspondingly, the way that they would behave towards us if full disclosure and open contact happened.
EDIT:
The original sources of the "apex predator" claims along with the possibility that hostile NHIs/UAPs have been investigating Earth's military defence capabilities are discussed in detail via the links near the top of the article. However, for readers' convenience, I will also provide the information here:
Lue Elizondo, using the term "alpha predator": https://www.ufojoe.net/lue-curt/

CJ: The last time we spoke, there were two comments that you said that stood out to me. One was the somber, the somber heard around the world, in a sense.
CJ: And then you clarified that or you added to that by saying sobering. I was wondering, we can get to that. [...]
Lue: Yeah. Let me start with somber or sobering. Imagine everything you’ve been taught, [...] Our background and our past. What if all of that turned out to be not entirely accurate? In fact, the very history of our species, the meaning what it means to be a human being and our place in this Universe. What if all that is now in question? What if it turns out that a lot of the things that we thought were one way, aren’t. Are we prepared to have that honest question with ourselves? Are we prepared to recognize that we’re not at the top of the food chain, potentially? That we’re not the alpha predator, that we are maybe somewhere in the middle?
It’s interesting because I was having discussion with a friend, not too long ago. A really, really…we call them gray beards in the government. A really, really smart guy. I’m not gonna mention his name, but I was talking to him probably a couple months ago. And this is a guy who was always paid to solve the hard problems for the U.S. government.[...] So this guy I respect tremendously and we had a conversation, and he said, “You know, Lue, mankind’s been around for a little while and for most of that time mankind’s been around, we’ve been smack in the middle of the food chain. We ate a lot of things and a lot of things ate us, and that’s just the bottom line. And about 70,000 years ago, something fundamentally changed, something changed, and our species was instantly catapulted to the very top of our planet, as far as predatory animals.” And now, all of a sudden, we became the most feared, we were the most lethal and the most successful. In fact, most of the large species that existed on this planet went extinct because of us, believe it or not, because we started eating all of it. There were a couple species that did very, very well with our ascension, our immediate ascension. And we brought a couple species with us, the dog is an example, where the dog species benefited greatly with mankind’s ascension as the alpha predator and wound up succeeding very well off of that. That changed the entire global landscape of our planet, almost overnight. Large animals went extinct because of us.
What if it turns out that there’s another species that is even higher on that ladder than we are? Do we need the social institutions that we have today? Will we need governmental and religious organizations that we have today, if it turns out that there is something else or someone else that is technologically more advanced and perhaps, from an evolutionary perspective, more advanced? Have we been wasting our time, all this time? Or, are we doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing? Does it turn out that mankind is in fact, just another animal in the zoo? Or…because we thought ourselves as a zookeeper before, but maybe we’re just another exhibit inside the zoo? What would that mean to us?
So, when I say sombering and sobering, I mean that there’s gonna come a point in this conversation where we’re gonna have to do a lot of reconciling with ourselves, whatever that means, from whatever philosophical background you have. This is going to impact every single one of us the same and yet equally and yet differently. And I think that’s important. You know, do we find ourselves in a situation where history may have to be rewritten? So that’s what I meant.
CJ: Speaking about humbling, when you mention the word sober and somber, to me, the reason why is not because we’re more special than we think we are, but we’re much less.
Lue: Yeah.
Lue: ... we also have to realize there’s a lot of things in this Universe that are gonna force you to reevaluate. And that’s really, really uncomfortable. Once you really realize that you are truly, we are alone out here in the Universe, from a human perspective, right? I’m not saying from a living thing. I’m saying from a human perspective. That’s scary for a lot of people.
To the best of our knowledge, we are the only humans in the universe. And of course, we have a bunch of animals we can play with on our little planet that we call Earth and it kind of makes us feel good. But, it’s looking more and more like every single day that there’s more out there. It’s just not human. And then the question is, “Okay, well, what are their intentions? What are their motivations? Do they want to work with us or do they want to subjugate us? Or, are we going to be tomorrow’s dinner menu, right? All these things go through the minds of people. And they’re good questions, and questions, frankly, we don’t have an answer for yet. And that makes people really, really uncomfortable and unsettled. And I think we need to be aware of it.
So back to your question: Am I subject to the same box bias that you are and everybody else? You’re damn right I am! Yeah. And we need to figure out how to look at this topic…look at, potentially, a non-human topic, through non-human eyes, is what I’m trying to say. We may have to take our human glasses off that kind of filter everything in human terms.

David Grusch, referring to "apex predator" and using humans vs mountain lions as an analogy: https://pastebin.com/3Dj1yFve

01:39:55 DG But also I live in the mountains of Colorado, right? So there is a Mountain Lion den about 10 miles from my house. In Colorado, literally, you know I am there are lower predatory sentience. I'm higher predatory sentience and I'm using this as a device or an analogy for NHI and US.
[...]
02:13:54 DG Psychological issue with this UAP issue where we might not be the apex predator [...] we may be that Mountain Lion. And we're going to have to be comfortable knowing that we're going to be vulnerable. There's people far superior that may have malevolent intentions, maybe not, I don't know. And almost be humbled. The fact that like, sorry, we're not the smartest [...] Yeah. And that and that might be really hard for a lot of people to process. And I think that's probably I would imagine one of the deliberations they must have done years ago, like we can't disclose because you know people are not gonna feel comfortable in that worldview

Congress UAP hearing, July 2023: Discussion of potentially hostile UAPs investigating Earth's military defences: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61910a2d98732d54b73ef8fc/t/64c278fad611445bd67b0019/1690466554425/Subcommittee+on+National+Security%2C+the+Border%2C+and+Foreign+Affairs+Hearing+UAP+PDF.pdf

Mr. Andy Ogles: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you all for being here and the courage it took to come forward, and again, the sacrifice that each of you have made. I serve on the National Security Subcommittee for the Financial Services Committee, so I really want to stay in the National security lane, if I may. When we think about traditional adversaries, both us towards them and them towards us, we probe their capabilities. We look for weaknesses, and we collect that data, that reconnaissance for in the event we need it in the future. For each of you, yes or no question: Based off of your own experience or the data that you've been privy to, is there any indication that these UAPs could be essentially collecting reconnaissance information? Mr. Graves?
Ryan Graves: Yes.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Mr. Grusch?
David Grusch: Fair assessment, yeah.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Mr. Fravor?
CDR. Fravor: It's very possible.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Again, in the national security vein, is it possible that these UAPs would be probing our capabilities, yes or no? Mr. Graves?
Ryan Graves: Yes.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Grusch?
David Grusch: Yes.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Fravor?
CDR. Fravor: Definitely.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Is it possible that these UAPs are testing for vulnerabilities in our current systems?
Ryan Graves: Yes.
David Grusch: Yes.
CDR. Fravor: Possible.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Do you feel, based off of your experience and the information that you've been privy to, that these UAPs provide an existential threat to the national security of the United States? Mr. Graves?
Ryan Graves: Potentially.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Yes, sir. Potentially.
David Grusch: Same answer, potentially.
CDR. Fravor: Yeah, I'd say definitely potentially.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Mr. Graves and Fravor, in the event that your encounters had become hostile, would you have had the capability to defend yourself, your crew, your aircraft?
Ryan Graves: Absolutely not.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Sir?
CDR. Fravor: No.
Mr. Andy Ogles: Based off of the information that you've been privy to, is there any indication that these UAPs are interested in our nuclear technology and capabilities?
Ryan Graves: Yes.
CDR. Fravor: Go ahead.
David Grusch: By external observation, sure, that could be a fair assessment, yeah.
CDR. Fravor: Yes.

Lue Elizondo and Jay Stratton’s joint statement in response to the Congress UAP hearing: https://twitter.com/jaystratton/status/1684729145626898432?s=20

While working in the U.S. Government's UAP investigation known as AATIP, we knew based on credible data that UAP present serious national security concerns and a potential existential threat. When we and our colleague [former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and former Staff Director of the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence] Chris Mellon tried to raise alarm bells within the Pentagon, we were blocked by the bureaucracy and stigma surrounding the topic. Ultimately, we decided the only way to bring attention to this urgent matter was for Lue to resign in protest and go public to create awareness, while Jay used that change to move the topic forward within the government (eventually becoming Director of the UAP Task Force). We swore oaths to serve the best interest of the American people and this was the best way to do that. Our goal was to be the spark that would light a fire, a fire more powerful than antiquated bureaucracy and stigma.
Yesterday we proudly watched the fire continue to grow in a momentous Congressional UAP hearing. Our brave friends and colleagues, former Naval Aviators Ryan Graves and Dave Fravor, and former Air Force Intelligence Officer / UAP Task Force member Dave Grusch, offered themselves up as witnesses, and spoke under oath about the topic to members of Congress and the public. We are grateful for all those who participated.
This is still just the beginning. There is considerable progress to be made and work to do in order to understand and address the national security concerns. Please always remember that an informed public is a powerful force and can be wielded to create positive change.
We will not be commenting further at this time, but know that we remain hard at work behind the scenes.
Lue Elizondo & Jay Stratton

John “Jay” Stratton: https://www.secnav.navy.mil/donhAbout/Senior-Executives/Biographies/Stratton,%20J.pdf
Stratton retired from the military in 2022; his background included working as a Naval Intelligence officer at the Nimitz Operational Intelligence Center (including representing the Navy as a senior member of the Intelligence Community), Director of Intelligence at the Joint Warfare Analysis Center, Chief of Air and Space Warfare at the Defense Intelligence Agency’s (DIA) Defense Warning Office, and Chief Space Technology at the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy’s Defense Technology Security Administration.

The whole country is in shock that judge Tomasz Szmydt of the Voivodeship Administrative Court in Warsaw has applied for asylum in Belarus and, to put it mildly, has betrayed our beautiful homeland.
I have the strong impression that the case is developing, because this is not the only judge on this court who has interesting connections. Take the example of mr. Jacek Mrozek, who was appointed by president Duda in May last year after much wrangling.
The matter needs a brief introduction. In her excellent article entitled 'The new Dyzma of Collegium Humanum', Anna Mierzyńska of OKO.press introduced the very strange character of Kamil Całek. He is a former policeman, an incurable mythomaniac who, however, quite truthfully cooperated with the pro-Russian politician Leszek Sykulski and was active in the Polish-Russian Brotherhood. The latter organisation acted as a propaganda tube for the Kremlin and actively recruited Russia supporters on social networks.
In Mierzyńska's multi-layered investigation, there is not enough room for some of the supporting characters, such as Jacek Mrozek, Kamil Całek's close associate. What are the links? Let's look at the PiS-controlled National Council of the Judiciary's) resolution of 25 March 2021. This is how Jacek Mrozek's candidacy for the Court was presented:

By decision of the Director General of the Central European Centre for Strategic Analysis at the Marshal Józef Piłsudski Association of Reserve Officers of the Republic of Poland in Poznań dated 29 March 2019, he was appointed as an expert in SCAS security management. Mr. Jacek Janusz Mrozek improves his qualifications by attending training courses and conferences, as well as post-graduate studies in: corporate finance and accounting [...] management of a local government unit, control, supervision and audit in public administration, MBA, international relations and diplomacy.

It all sounds very good until you dig a little deeper. The director of the centre is none other than Kamil Całek, whom Mierzyńska calls the 'new Dyzma'. The analysis centre itself is a complete sham. It is just a website on the Internet and has no legal status. It was used by Całek to give credibility to various defence conferences. The same goes for Jacek Mrozek's education - for example, his MBA from the diploma mill Apsley School, which is affiliated with the Collegium Humanum. It is a worthless piece of paper.
In a statement before his appointment as a judge, Jacek Mrozek said that he was not a member of any political party or association. I hope that at least this statement was not a lie, because he certainly belonged, together with Kamil Całek and a whole group of other people, to a strange association called the Polish-Ukrainian Union. At one time he was also a member of PiS. He ran unsuccessfully for the Senate in 2007.
He has one thing in common with Kamil Całek. Mrozek embellishes his biography to the extreme. He is also a great fan of decoration. I checked it out. Całek boasts of eighteen medals on his website, but Jacek Mrozek beats him - he lists 40!
Like Kamil Całek, he has been awarded the Covid-19 Cross of Merit, the Medal of Merit for Territorial Defence), the Medal of Merit for Polish Diplomacy and the Medal of the XXV Anniversary of the Union of Polish Monarchist Groups (LOL). However, Mrozek also has some very unique decorations, such as the commemorative badge of the 7th District Technical Workshop - awarded by the last living commander (2022), or the jubilee badge on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Honorary Blood Donors' of the PCK "Heart of a Miner" Club. Even more surprising in this collection are such ordinary and fresh state decorations as the Silver and Gold Cross of Merit), the Commission of National Education Medal or the Pro Patria Medal).
The list of Jacek Mrozek's academic achievements is as long as the list of honours. It is worth noting, however, that he was a member of the Polish Geostrategic Society, the Scientific Society of Eastern Studies and chairman of the Polish Geopolitical Society's Ełk branch. All of these organisations are associated with Leszek Sykulski, the founder of what is now an openly pro-Russian party Safe Poland. He is also the author of publications in the Geopolitical Review.
In 2019, he was a member of the organising committee of an international scientific conference named 'Innovative Thinking and Scientific Exploration of Student Youth', which took place in Polessk, Russia. I should also mention that he was educated at the Naval Academy in Gdynia. Like Kamil Całek, he studied diplomacy. A pro-Russian activist, Gracjan Cimek is a researcher at the Academy. The university also made its premises available for conferences on geopolitics by Sykulski.
Mrozek also continued his education at the Gdańsk University of Science and Technology, where another pro-Russian academic, Professor Adam Karpiński, teaches. The most important and scientifically fruitful, however, was his collaboration with the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University, where he obtained his PhD. I am more and more fascinated by this university, where there is a place for a Putin lover, Adam Wielomski, and Jan Żaryn, who willingly cooperates with the pro-Russian group Polish Thought.
I have no idea what the relationship was between Tomasz Szmydt and Jacek Mrozek, apart from the fact that they were appointed by the same president and sat on the same court. However, the amount of disturbing detail in Jacek Mrozek's biography should probably raise a red flag for all the agencies in Poland. I, for one, would hurry before he also gets the idea of going on holiday to Belarus. By a strange coincidence, Mr Jacek Mrozek's official website went down today.

I went to a library near me last week. I asked a librarian where the biography section is. She said that they used to be separate but now they're mixed in with the non-fiction. Why is that done? How do you decide where to put them? An example of this that I was asking my husband about is - Tom Selleck has a biography coming out. What section would it be in? (He said in the moustache section lol!) I like a section where I can look them over for something interesting at the time.
Also, I'm a patron not a librarian.😀

The second part of Mary's and Elizabeth's story. I learned from last time: This is a draft! You will find some of the sources and the literature at the end (I was trained in Germany, we don't differentiate between primary and secondary sources but sources and literature):
I. Introduction
In the spring of 1554, Elizabeth Tudor was in grave danger. Her half-sister, Queen Mary, had imprisoned her in the Tower of London on suspicion of being involved in the Wyatt Rebellion. The insurrection was against the Queen's plan to marry the Spanish crown prince, Philip, who was a staunch Catholic. Elizabeth was forced to live in the same chambers where her mother, Anne Boleyn, had been held before her execution 18 years earlier.
According to Tracy Borman, the Queen's advisers had already written up Elizabeth’s death warrant. All Mary had to do was sign it. As she held the ink-soaked quill that could end her half-sister's life, her hand hovered over the document. However, she ultimately chose not to sign it.
On May 19, 1554, Elizabeth was released from the Tower and placed under house arrest in the old royal hunting mansion at Woodstock. Until then, Elizabeth did not know whether she was to be allowed to live or had to face execution. It wasn't until the anniversary of her mother's execution that her fate was revealed to her.
During her time at the Tower, Elizabeth learned two valuable lessons that would shape the rest of her life: She should never be replaceable, and she should avoid making decisions until they are unavoidable. These principles guided Elizabeth for the rest of her life.

II. Why Elizabeth was saved
Elizabeth had very few people in Mary's government who were on her side. Only William Baron Paget advocated for Anne Boleyn's daughter. On the other hand, Elizabeth had many enemies. Lord Chancellor Bishop Stephen Gardiner, Mary's cousin Emperor Charles V, and the imperial ambassador Simon Renard all believed that Elizabeth's execution was necessary to ensure the Queen's permanent hold on the throne. There were even rumors that Margaret Douglas, Mary's best friend and potential heir, had spoken in favor of Elizabeth's execution.
However, there was a lack of evidence to support such a decision. The government tried everything to find evidence, or at least to fabricate it. The insurgent leader Thomas Wyatt was at the center of these efforts. He had already been sentenced to death before Elizabeth arrived at the Tower. However, the execution had been postponed. Wyatt, who had initially supported Mary even against Lady Jane Grey at the beginning of her reign, was now being pushed to incriminate Elizabeth as much as possible. As a side note, it wasn't Wyatt's first time being involuntarily held at the Tower. During the reign of Edward VI, he had also been imprisoned there for a few days because he had drunkenly smashed windows.
Wyatt, however, refused to name Elizabeth as the head of the rebellion, only stating that she may have known about the plan. His co-conspirator, Sir James Croft, could say more. Wyatt instead heavily incriminated his co-conspirator, Edward Courtenay. He was the real head of the conspiracy.
Mary's interrogators capitulated: April 11, 1554, was designated as the day of Wyatt's execution. As a resident of the Tower, whose name is not known to us, reports in a private chronicle, there were two peculiarities: First, Wyatt asked to be allowed to speak with Courtenay, who had been imprisoned in the Tower since February 12. Second, his last words were to be interrupted.
Wyatt's request was granted. According to the source, he had to be carried to Courtenay, who was imprisoned in the tower above Traitor's Gate. This shows the massive torture he was most likely subjected to. The two men talked for about half an hour. Unfortunately, the exact content of the conversation has not been handed down.
However, Wyatt's last words give an idea about what was said: he not only withdrew his accusations against Elizabeth but also exonerated Courtenay. In doing so, he probably saved two lives. Henry Weston, who oversaw the execution of Wyatt, interrupted the condemned man, which was highly unusual. According to the tower resident, he spoke this sentence:
"Merke this, my masters, eh sayeth hat that which eh hathe showed to hte counsel ni wryting of ymlady Elizaleth and Courtney ys true."
In this way, he confirmed that Wyatt had not lied to protect his reputation in the public eye, which held Elizabeth in high esteem but secretly incriminated her. It's unclear how Mary's advisers responded. It was a remarkable parallel of history: Wyatt's father had been imprisoned in the wake of the allegations against Anne Boleyn on suspicion of having had an affair with the Queen. The only thing that saved him was his friendship with Thomas Cromwell. Weston's father, Francis, was less fortunate. He was beheaded on May 17, 1536. Now the sons of the two men faced each other – and Weston had to supervise the execution on behalf of the Queen.
Mary herself dealt with the fact that Wyatt had exonerated her half-sister in a surprising way: she confiscated Wyatt's estates because he was a convicted traitor. However, she provided his family with a small pension that allowed them to survive. Among Wyatt's descendants was Wallis Simpson, for whom King Edward VIII abdicated his throne. Wyatt himself was beheaded before being quartered. He thus escaped the worst part of his punishment.
Courtenay, who had betrayed the rebellion before it even started, was released from the Tower and exiled to Venice. Mary's government tried for four more weeks to find any incriminating material against the Queen's half-sister but to no avail. The public grew increasingly resentful of the continued imprisonment of the heir to the throne, especially after Wyatt, who had been visibly tortured, cleared her name. Additionally, Mary's judges informed her that her half-sister could not be found guilty under the current laws.
It is not clear what ultimately led to Elizabeth's release from the Tower and her house arrest in Oxfordshire. While some argue that it was due to the Queen's conscience, which emerged just in time, others point out that between 1554 and 1555, people from Elizabeth's household were repeatedly arrested on suspicion of treason. This suggests that the Queen continued to view her half-sister as a threat. Modern historians have described the Queen as "paranoid about Elizabeth.”
Another thesis uses the popularity of Anne Boleyn's daughter as an argument for why Mary spared Elizabeth's life. Even this justification is not entirely convincing: During the Wyatt Rebellion 20,000 Londoners had volunteered to fight for the Queen. She had just successfully crushed the uprising. It had not found the popular support that its leaders had hoped for.
Elizabeth was likely allowed to live for several reasons. The Queen saw the rebellion as an attack by Protestants on their religion, who were allegedly equipped with "a Spanish cloak to cover their pretended purpose," as she wrote in a letter. She couldn't imagine that Catholics could also be against her marriage to the heir to the Habsburg throne. The rise of English nationalism was not a relevant force in her eyes.
Elizabeth had never made any public comments regarding Mary's plans to get married. Even though she appeared to be a Catholic, attending Mass twice a day, she avoided speaking in support of the Catholic faith. She would often cough or clear her throat to excuse herself from speaking at sensitive points during Mass. Mary had been aware that her half-sister was only pretending to be a Catholic since December 1553. In fact, at that time, Mary had even accused Elizabeth of it.
Despite this, Anne Boleyn's daughter was still valuable to Mary as a symbol. The more Elizabeth was seen attending Mass, the less suitable she was as a leader of Protestantism. However, if Mary were to have her half-sister executed, Elizabeth would become a martyr. Therefore, it was more beneficial for Mary to keep Elizabeth alive and permanently convert her to Catholicism.
On top of that, her wedding to Philip was getting closer and closer. The wedding ceremony had already encountered major issues and difficulties. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was imprisoned for being a heretic. Typically, he would have been the one to conduct the wedding ceremony and crown Philip as the king. However, if Elizabeth remained imprisoned in the Tower during the wedding, it would cast a dark shadow over the connection. Elizabeth was still the heir to the throne. Her execution around the time of the wedding would have been disastrous.
To avoid any potential issues, Elizabeth had to disappear from the public eye. If she wanted to play an active role again, she would have to comply with the Queen's demands. This impression is evident in the sources available. Officially, Mary was done with her half-sister, and Elizabeth's name does not appear in the collection of Mary's State Papers for the rest of the Queen's life. In this situation Mary was a perfect blend of her parents, possessing Katherine's political acumen and Henry's stubbornness.

III. Elizabeth is under house arrest
Mary initially felt vindicated in her decision to keep Elizabeth under house arrest, as it seemed to work in her favor. While over 200 rebel leaders were executed, most ordinary prisoners were pardoned for a fine. This prevented any serious uprisings against Mary for the rest of her reign.
In addition to the emotional significance, Mary's marriage to Philip was also economically beneficial for England. Phillip brought 20 cartloads of American silver to the wedding, which helped to support the weak English economy. The Royal Mint was allowed to mint silver coins for Spain, which marked its first foreign order. Mary proved herself to be a capable ruler in economic matters.
During her reign as Queen of England, Mary made significant strides in modernizing the country, which her predecessors had failed to do. England still adhered to the rules of the late medieval economic system, despite its collapse in the second half of the 15th century. Mary caught up on the overdue reforms, which would benefit her successor for decades to come.
In September 1554, Mary received good news as she gained weight, and her menstruation stopped, leading her doctors and court attendants to believe that she was pregnant. The Queen herself also experienced nausea, which further convinced everyone of her pregnancy. The imperial ambassador even reported back home that there was no doubt that the Queen was carrying a child.
Mary felt empowered and began to take violent action against the Protestants in her kingdom. Just a month after announcing her miraculous pregnancy, she had Bishops Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer burned. Thomas Cranmer, whom she hated, was in prison awaiting his indictment as a heretic.
According to Mary's wishes, Cardinal Reginald Pole was to play a decisive role in this. Her close confidant returned on 23 November 1554 from his exile and assumed the position of Archbishop of Canterbury. Mary's great goal now was for her heir to be born in an England where the Pope would be the head of the Church again.
Parliament supported Mary on this issue. In January 1555, the Second Act of Repeal was passed, which made England a Catholic kingdom again. The law also removed the legal hurdle to prosecute Protestants more severely. Corresponding actions began as early as February 1555.
The unpopular burnings earned the Queen the nickname "Bloody Mary". Nearly 300 of their subjects were to die at the stake. However, historians have debated whether her reputation for cruelty is accurate. The book "Book of Martyrs" by John Foxe, published in 1563, was instrumental in creating the image of Bloody Mary. As a Protestant, Foxe had a strong religious interest in portraying Mary as a monstrous and frightening figure.
Mary viewed the use of burnings as a necessary means to deter Protestants from their faith and was surprised by the number of Protestants who chose death by fire over converting to Catholicism. However, she believed that the most important aspect of her efforts was ensuring that no new Protestant clerics could emerge, hence she strictly monitored seminaries and universities.
During Elizabeth's time of house arrest, she was under the guard of Sir John Williams, who treated her kindly. It is assumed that Elizabeth acted with extreme caution during this time so as not to upset her half-sister. As the announcement of Mary's pregnancy meant that Elizabeth would lose her position in the line of succession, she had to be careful not to do anything that could jeopardize her safety.

IV. Mary's First False Pregnancy and the Fatal Consequences
Mary found herself in a situation similar to her mother's, towards the end of Katherine and Henry's marriage, during the spring of 1555. Mary had a responsibility to produce an heir, as failure to do so would put her position and Catholicism in England at risk. At the time, Mary was fully aware of the potential consequences if Elizabeth was to come to power.
However, it is unclear whether or not the Queen recognized the parallel between her mother's life and her own, or if Mary was trying to break the curse that had plagued her since Anne entered her life. Regardless, Mary followed the customary practice of withdrawing to Hampton Court in the spring of 1555 for the birth of her child. She ordered Elizabeth to be present when her heir to the throne entered the world.
If you want to, you can interpret this order as a gesture of reconciliation between siblings, which must have taken place in 1555, at least on the surface. However, I find it difficult to interpret it as anything other than an attempt to humiliate Elizabeth. The Queen, for instance, stated that the Spanish king, Philip, should be regent for the child, not her half-sister, should she die in childbirth.
As we all know, events took a different turn. The calculated due date came and went, and it was not until July that the Queen resigned amid mocking laughter from the political public. Her abdominal swelling had subsided. The Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Michieli, had recently predicted that the pregnancy would end “in wind”. Philip, much to the Queen's sadness, returned to the mainland just a month later. Most people saw the false pregnancy and Philip's departure as a sign that the Queen would never be able to have children.
Mary was likely struggling with depression during that time. She believed that the events that occurred were "God's punishment" for tolerating heretics in her kingdom. As a result, she took even harsher action against them. One of her most prominent victims was Cranmer, who had renounced Protestantism for fear of being burned at the stake and turned back to Catholicism. Although it was customary for him to be pardoned, Mary did not follow this tradition.
Cranmer was forced to read out his retraction in public shortly before his burning in October 1556. According to reports, he first put the hand into the fire with which he had signed the document by which he turned away from Protestantism. Historians agree that it was primarily an act of personal revenge on the part of the Queen, as Cranmer had annulled her parents' marriage.

V. Philip and Elizabeth
Elizabeth might even have become a threat to Mary’s marriage – at least in the eyes of the monarch. Despite Philip's constant search for new lovers on the continent, there is little doubt that the Queen was truly in love with him. For example, Michieli reported she was "extraordinarily in love."
Philip, however, had already discovered while he was still in England that Elizabeth was, let’s say, of marriageable age. According to Michieli, the Habsburg prince had considered marrying the Queen‘s half-sister in case Mary died giving birth. However, there is some disagreement about how serious these considerations were. In a letter to his brother-in-law Maximilian, Philip expressed doubts about whether Mary was pregnant.
Following the false pregnancy, Philip aimed to establish a positive relationship with Elizabeth, most likely having already supported her while she was under house arrest. Mary’s half-sister was pleased to accept the king's friendship. As per J. E. Neale, she made every effort to integrate herself into Philip's circle of Spanish friends at court.
In October 1555, Elizabeth was permitted to leave Mary's court and return to her household, but it's uncertain whether it was a sign of Queen Mary's confidence in her half-sister. It's more likely that Mary couldn't tolerate Elizabeth's presence anymore. At this point, Mary began focusing on a topic she had never been enthusiastic about: finding a suitable husband for Elizabeth.
Philip advocated for Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy, and with good reason. Not only would he ensure a Catholic succession, but he was also Philip's trusted proxy in England. After Mary's death, Philibert would be a suitable puppet. In December 1553, Elizabeth had also agreed to have her name linked with Philibert's. This option was more favorable than making Mary, Queen of Scots the heir, even so she was catholic. Mary, promised to the French Dauphin, was too close to the Habsburgs' greatest enemies.
Elizabeth, however, knew that time was on her side. She was safe as heir to the throne after the disaster of the false pregnancy. Even for the Spaniards she was considered a better alternative than her Scottish great-cousin. She refused all marriage requests. Philip's four-month visit to England, beginning in March 1557, was primarily intended to persuade Elizabeth to change her mind. Mary must have been hurt significantly as she had been urging her husband to come back for a long time.
It seems improbable that Parliament would have approved of such a marriage. Consequently, it gradually distanced itself from Mary. In December 1555, the Queen attempted to seize the assets of 100 Protestants in exile, but her request was denied.
Later, Philip reconsidered the idea of marrying Elizabeth himself. After she ascended the throne, he proposed a corresponding match, but the new English monarch declined the offer.

VI. Mary joins Philip's war against France and becomes an enemy of the Pope
Philip became King of Spain in 1556. Mary, as his wife, thus became Queen of Spain. The Habsburg, now finally in power, wanted to eliminate Protestantism by all means. War was included. And that's what happened – but against Catholic France.
France had done Philip the great favor of attacking the Spaniards. Mary rushed to her husband's aid and joined the war. Together, they inflicted a heavy defeat on the French at the Battle of Saint-Quentin in August 1557. But the fortunes of the war turned against the English: Calais, the last English mainland base, was lost in January 1558.
Mary is said to have reacted to this message with the following sentence:
"When I am dead and opened, you shall find Calais engraved on my heart".
Pope Paul IV raged over the war. He needed the French to defend him against the Habsburgs in northern Italy. England's participation had ensured that he could hardly expect any significant support. He therefore demanded the return of Pole to Rome in order to appoint a new Archbishop of Canterbury himself who would bring the Queen under control. Mary refused, going against the authority on which she had hitherto guided all her actions.
Later on, this turned out to be helpful, albeit in a cynical way, for Elizabeth. The Pope had spoken out against Anne Boleyn's daughter inheriting Mary's throne. However, the relationship with the English Catholics had become so strained that this was no longer relevant. It was clear that the future of England lay in Elizabeth, and with that, it was expected that Protestantism would return.
Mary still hoped to prevent this from happening. She believed she was pregnant again in 1557. However, this time, there were no preparations for a birth, apart from the fact that she made her will in the spring of 1558. It is tragic to read this from today's perspective:
"Fyrste, whereas I the said Quene have with the good contentment and pleasure of my said most dere belov'd Lorde and husbande the Kyng's Majesty devis'd & made my said last will and testament, beryng date the 30th day of Marche last past, and by the same, for that as I then thowght myself to be with childe did devise and dispose the Imperiall Crowne of this Realme of Englond and the Crowne of Ireland, with my title to France and all the dependances thereof, and all other honours, Castells, Fortresses, Prerogatives and hereditaments, of what nature, kynde or qualitie soever they be, belongyng to this crowne, unto the heires, Issewe and frewte of my body begotten, & the government, order, and rewle of the said heire and Issewe I recommended unto my said most dere Lord and husband duryng the mynoryte of the said heire, accordynge to the lawes of this Realme in that case provided."
"Thinking myself to be with child in lawful marriage between my said dearly beloved husband and Lord, altho' I be at this present (thankes be unto Almighty God) otherwise in good helthe, yet foreseeing the great danger which by Godd's ordynance remaine to all whomen in ther travel of children, have thought good, both for discharge of my conscience and continewance of good order within my Realmes and domynions to declare my last will and testament"
Mary believed she was pregnant and in good health, and even suggested once more her husband be named as regent for the child. This was unrealistic as England had suffered significant losses in the war, while Habsburg had not. The Spanish king was more unpopular than ever. From 1555 to 1558, Mary's kingdom struggled with severe crop failures, leading to hunger and a severe influenza epidemic in 1558. One of Mary's ladies-in-waiting, Jane Dormer, fell ill but later recovered.
The Queen herself may have also fallen sick. When Mary returned to London at the end of August 1558 after her fake pregnancy, she asked Dormer how she was doing. Dormer replied with "reasonably well", to which Mary said, "So am not I". She then retired to her chambers and never left them again.

VII. Battle for the Crown: Mary Must Accept Elizabeth
Mary's health was deteriorating day by day and she was having fever dreams frequently. According to Dormer's later reports, Mary would sometimes wake up and recount seeing small children playing angelically beside her in her sleep. The Queen used these stories to console her close ones by reminding them that whatever happens, God has allowed it.
However, Mary's will posed a problem as it did not name any heir, except a child that was not born. This made her last will not only impractical but also went against the current law of succession. To resolve this, Mary agreed to add a new passage to her will on October 28, 1558:
"Yf yt shall please Almighty God to call me to his mercye owte of this transytory lyfe without issewe and heire of my bodye lawfully begotten, Then I most instantly desire et per viscera misericordiae Dei, requyre my next heire & Successour, by the Laws and Statutes of this Realme, not only to permytt and suffer the executors of my said Testament and last will and the Survivours of them to perform the same."
Elizabeth was only confirmed by the insertion "by the Laws and Statutes of this Realme". However, this was still not enough as Elizabeth was not officially named despite actively preparing for her reign that very same month. Due to this reason, Mary was pushed further.
The Queen finally sent Dormer to her half-sister with three conditions, which she had to meet in order to be allowed to succeed her:

1. It is important for England to remain Catholic.
   
2. Queen Elizabeth should treat Mary's servants well.
   
3. Queen Elizabeth is responsible for paying the Crown's outstanding debts.
   

It is said that Dormer demanded proof on Mary's behalf that Elizabeth was indeed a Catholic. Elizabeth reacted angrily to this, arguing that she had complied with this often enough. However, she accepted the terms. It is mentioned in the literature that Mary also acknowledged Elizabeth as an heiress by name on November 6, 1558, but I couldn’t find a source for this.
Mary passed away between 5:00 and 6:00 in the morning on November 17, 1558. Her good friend Reginald Pole survived her by just twelve hours. The diplomat Nicholas Throckmorton was tasked with informing Elizabeth of Mary's death. Six hours after Mary's death, Throckmorton proclaimed Elizabeth as the new Queen. It was then that the coronation ring was brought to Elizabeth, which was extensively checked for authenticity by her ladies-in-waiting.
Mary's funeral was held on December 13, 1558, and her husband was not present. In a letter to his sister Joan, Philip expressed "reasonable regret" over her death. However, there was a scandal during the funeral when Winchester's Bishop John White gave an obituary for Mary and expressed doubts about Elizabeth's abilities as Queen. As a result, Elizabeth had him arrested a day later. With Mary's death and Elizabeth's ascension to the throne, England's generational traumas of Katherine and Anne finally came to an end. Although there were others to follow, such as the "Great Plot" to assassinate Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots. But we will not delve into them today.

Examples for literature and sources used for this text (That’s far from being all. I tried to pick those
you can check online yourself for this list):

Borman, T. (2023). Anne Boleyn & Elizabeth I.
Edwards, J. (2007). Mary I: England’s Catholic Queen.
Edwards, J. (2018). Mary I: The Daughter of Time. https://www.amazon.de/Mary-Penguin-Monarchs-Daughter-Time/dp/0141988681
Froude, J. A. (2023). The Divorce of Catherine of Aragon
The Story as Told by the Imperial Ambassadors Resident at the Court of Henry VIII.
Lee, S. (1900). Wyatt, Thomas. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography,_1885-1900/Wyatt,_Thomas_(1521%3F-1554))
Lemon, R (1856). Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reigns of Edward VI., Mary, Elizabeth and James I, 1547-1625 Preserved in the Stat Paper Department of Her Majesty's Public Record Office. https://www.google.de/books/edition/Calendar_of_State_Papers_Domestic_Series/NvsUAAAAQAAJ?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=state+papers+domestic+mary+I&printsec=frontcover
Loades, D. (2016). Elizabeth I: A Life.
Loades, D. (2011). Mary Tudor.
Mayer, T. F. (2000). Reginald Pole – Prince & Prophet. https://www.google.de/books/edition/Reginald_Pole/OqaBq2QGrFEC?hl=de&gbpv=1&dq=reginald+pole&printsec=frontcover
Neale, J. E. (1934). Queen Elizabeth. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.208607/mode/2up
Nichols, J. G. (editor) (1850). The chronicle of Queen Jane, and of two years of Queen Mary, and especially of the rebellion of Sir Thomas Wyat / Written by a resident in the Tower of London. https://books.google.de/books?id=-cwyHxW4TwEC&printsec=frontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
Whitelock, A. (2016). Mary Tudor: England’s First Queen.