Search results

Pressured speech is a term used in psychiatry to describe one symptom of a manic episode of Bipolar Disorder, Autism, ADHD, BPD and more. It’s when a person speaks with a sense of urgency, without pauses and often incoherently. Many people have witnessed or experienced this, but don’t know there is a clinical term for it. And what makes it trickier to identify is that this phenomenon is not exclusive to people diagnosed with one of those psychiatric conditions. Anyone under a concoction of stressful stimuli may exhibit this symptom, and that isn’t necessarily an indication they are bipolar or autistic. Being in the limelight, for instance, can provoke tone alteration in most people, often resembling pressured speech. Knowing, however, that this may be a medical condition could positively inform our reactions to it. From Mirna Wabi-Sabi Read this article, about pressured speech, in English and in full, at: abeautifulresistance.org Fala Pressionada (ou discurso pressionado) é um termo usado na psiquiatria para descrever um sintoma de um episódio maníaco de Transtorno Bipolar, Autismo, TDAH, TPB e mais. É quando uma pessoa fala com senso de urgência, sem pausas e muitas vezes de forma incoerente. Muitas pessoas já testemunharam ou experienciaram isso, mas não sabem que possui um termo clínico. E o que torna mais difícil a identificação é que esse fenômeno não é exclusivo de pessoas diagnosticadas com uma dessas condições psiquiátricas. Qualquer pessoa sob uma mistura de estímulos estressantes pode apresentar esse sintoma, portanto não é necessariamente uma indicação de bipolaridade ou autismo. Estar sob os holofotes, por exemplo, pode provocar alteração de tom na maioria das pessoas, muitas vezes lembrando uma fala pressionada. Saber, no entanto, que essa pode ser uma condição médica informa positivamente as nossas reações a ela. Como editora, muitas vezes vejo sinais de discurso pressionado na escrita das pessoas. Há um certo nível de desespero para transmitir um ponto de vista, mas o ponto tem muitas camadas e os conceitos são empilhados uns sobre os outros, sem conexões claras entre eles. Os sinais clássicos são frases longas com esses imensos conceitos listados um após o outro. Os parágrafos são intermináveis e não está claro onde a história começou e para onde vai. Todas as pessoas escritoras são suscetíveis a isso, mas o sintoma que se destaca como psiquiatricamente maníaco é a urgência que emana do texto – como se o texto que está sendo escrito e lido devesse, por si só, mudar significativamente principais aspectos do mundo. A urgência por trás da necessidade de que algo mude, ou de que algo seja interrompido, é naturalmente expressa através da fala e, claro, através da escrita como forma de fala. Como podemos distinguir entre um estilo de escrita e um sintoma clínico? Essa distinção é útil para aqueles cujo trabalho é ajudar um escritor a tornar o seu texto mais eficaz – pessoas editoras. Mas também é útil para qualquer um que deseje aprimorar suas habilidades de comunicação. Se o leitor não consegue entender o que está sendo dito em um texto, não é uma escrita eficaz. Como tal, a primeira preocupação é compreender o público. Pessoas com autismo notoriamente encontram dificuldade nisso, mas todas as pessoas devem desenvolver essa habilidade, de uma forma ou de outra, para se comunicarem. Nos episódios maníacos, a comunicação é particularmente prejudicada, em grande parte devido à incapacidade de ler a audiência, mas também devido a “delírios de grandeza”, onde a audiência é vista como inadequada. Há uma linha tênue entre acreditar em você mesmo, ou que seu trabalho como escritora faz uma diferença real no mundo, e um senso patológico de autoestima. Há uma linha tênue entre saber que você pode apresentar novas ideias ao seu leitor, e acreditar que ele é ignorante. Independentemente de onde essa linha seja traçada, responder com reasseguramento e gentileza é crucial ao abordar pessoas que lidam com uma condição psiquiátrica. Isso não significa ceder ou ignorar os problemas. Significa tentar captar a mensagem que estão tentando transmitir e ajudá-los a criar uma estrutura eficaz para apresentar essa mensagem. No processo de estruturação do pensamento, a pessoa editora tem a oportunidade de ajudar alguém que está passando por um episódio maníaco a compreender e se apropriar de seus sentimentos, antes de divulgá-los publicamente. Afinal, é um sentimento que provoca a necessidade urgente de escrever sobre um assunto. Mas, às vezes, o sentimento é tão forte que corremos e cortamos atalhos na narrativa, tornando a estória ininteligível. E quando isso acontece, um texto torna-se ineficaz, causando frustração ou uma bola de neve de emoções negativas. O primeiro passo para garantir uma estrutura narrativa eficaz é um começo, meio e fim. O começo: Onde estamos? O que estamos fazendo? Por que o leitor deveria se importar? No início, situamos o público no o quê. O que está acontecendo no mundo agora que justifica a escrita e a leitura de centenas de palavras? Talvez haja guerra na Ásia Ocidental e a islamofobia seja descarada na cobertura noticiosa tradicional. Alguma estrela pop começou a namorar alguém que traiu a ex-namorada. Uma espécie rara de ave foi observada em um habitat incomum. O artigo pode ser sobre qualquer coisa, então é melhor dizer logo de cara qual é a coisa. Começar um artigo introduzindo um 'o quê' que é muito vago ou amplo como conceito é ineficaz porque os leitores não saberão a resposta para "e daí?", e não saberão por que deveriam se preocupar com o que estão prestes a ler. Pessoas leitoras online têm períodos curtos de atenção. Elas precisam ser lembradas de por que deveriam se importar com frequência. Nesse sentido, escrever sobre a vida, a humanidade, o mundo em geral em um post de blog é escrever sobre nada, na verdade. No que você vai focar sobre a vida, a humanidade ou o mundo, nesse caso específico, é o que deveria ser dito no início. O meio: Evite dizer às pessoas o que é ou não é. Mostre as evidências e deixe-as falar por si. O meio é onde listamos os argumentos e evidências sobre o quê e por que devemos nos importar. É também uma oportunidade para definir termos e, por vezes, conceitos amplos podem ser empregados com o objetivo final de servir como argumento de apoio ao ponto principal do texto. Por exemplo, defina o termo islamofobia e mostre evidências disso na mídia, junto às fontes. Mostre e analise as evidências sobre a vida amorosa da estrela pop. Descreva o habitat em que a ave rara foi encontrada, explique o que significa a sua presença ali e de acordo com quem. Ou seja, o meio é onde você mostra os recibos, mesmo que todos sejam baseados na sua experiência pessoal. Encontrar ou elaborar evidências para o ponto principal que estamos tentando defender é o maior desafio da escrita de não-ficção. Seguido pelo desafio de tecer um fio ligando todas essas evidências em direção a um propósito final. Uma narrativa não-ficcional é essencialmente isso – um conjunto coerente de evidências que leva à afirmação de uma tese. O fim: E agora? Suponha que todas as evidências que apoiam o ponto estejam apresentadas e que a tese tenha sido afirmada. Ao concluir, a pessoa escritora pode apresentar ao público o que espera que o leitor faça com todas as informações que acabou de ler. Tudo o que a audiência obtém ao ler um texto não pode ser previsto, mas um senso de propósito acessível por parte do escritor ainda pode ser compartilhado. Porque se não conseguimos verbalizar qual foi o motivo de escrever o texto, qual foi o motivo de lê-lo? Às vezes, no processo de criação da estrutura, percebemos que estamos fazendo suposições das quais não temos evidências. Ou estamos fazendo suposições sobre o nosso público, como esperar que ele se identifique instintivamente com algo com o qual ele não necessariamente se identifica. Algumas coisas não são óbvias, e é por isso que sentimos necessidade de falar e escrever em primeiro lugar. Pessoas editoras não são psiquiatras ou terapeutas. Como com qualquer outro indivíduo, só podemos fazer o que está ao nosso alcance. E valorizar vozes neurodivergentes está ao nosso alcance. Se não nos esforçarmos para perceber esse valor, estaremos contribuindo para o silenciamento sistemático de grande parte da população. Diz-se que uma em cada oito pessoas lida com uma condição psicológica prejudicial, sendo a fala pressionada não apenas um sintoma identificável, mas também um sintoma de transtornos de humor com alto risco de suicídio. É possível ser honesto e construtivo com feedback sem alienar ainda mais as pessoas neurodivergentes. Ao fazer isso, novas e inesperadas ideias sobre como aprimorar a comunicação podem se tornar um recurso valioso para todas as pessoas que pretendem comunicar ideias através da escrita. ___ Mirna Wabi-Sabi

In Argentina, Javier Milei is eager to support Israel’s invasion of Gaza and to follow Trump’s footsteps in moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Showing how Javier Milei’s employment of the term Anarchism is nonsensical doesn’t take much effort, but nonsense is highly electable in our era. For an anarchist to run for president, he would be seeking a position he doesn’t believe should exist, and would be ideologically committed to not doing the job. As Milei campaigns and wins his bid in Argentina, he is, however, committed to doing a job as head of state, despite calling himself an anarchist. The commitment is to instate the freest of capitalist markets and keep the government as small as possible – without his own job seizing to exist. This means, out with regulations and ministries, in with USD stocks and security forces – to protect private assets. How can an ironclad relationship with the USA and Israel, which are his first confirmed international trips since the election, help him achieve that? Read the article in English, in full, here. O falso anarquismo de Milei e seu apoio estrondoso a Israel Mostrar como o uso do termo Anarquismo por Javier Milei é absurdo não exige muito esforço, mas o absurdo é altamente elegível em nossa era. Para um anarquista concorrer à presidência, ele estaria buscando um cargo que não acredita que deveria existir, e estaria ideologicamente comprometido em não fazer o trabalho. À medida que Javier Milei faz campanha e vence a sua candidatura na Argentina, ele está, no entanto, empenhado em fazer um trabalho como chefe de Estado, apesar de se autodenominar anarquista. Seu compromisso é instaurar o mais livre dos mercados capitalistas e manter o governo o menor possível – sem que o seu próprio emprego deixe de existir. Isso significa acabar com regulamentos e ministérios, e exaltar stocks em dólares americanos e as forças armadas – para proteger bens privados. Como uma relação inquebrável com os EUA e Israel, que são as suas primeiras viagens internacionais confirmadas desde as eleições, pode ajudá-lo a alcançar esses objetivos? A estratégia de Milei para gerar riqueza e conter a inflação é privatizar tudo, e isso já sacudiu a bolsa de valores nos EUA. Segundo a Reuters, o seu plano de vender a YPF, a empresa petrolífera nacional, já fez com que suas ações subissem 40% desde a vitória eleitoral. “A YPF é a maior empresa petrolífera da Argentina e supervisiona o desenvolvimento da Vaca Muerta, a segunda maior reserva de gás de xisto do mundo e a quarta maior reserva de óleo de xisto.” A dolarização da Argentina tornará esse tipo de venda ainda mais conveniente para os estrangeiros. Ao mesmo tempo, a privatização desses bens públicos estabilizará a dolarização. Pelo menos é nisso que Milei está apostando, e ele precisa que funcione por vários motivos. Um deles é que a YPF está sob escrutínio judicial pela forma como foi nacionalizada em primeiro lugar. Uma sentença de 16 bilhões de um tribunal dos EUA paira sobre a cabeça da empresa devido à “apreensão” de ações de investidores minoritários em 2012. Outra razão pela qual Milei precisa que esse plano funcione é que a Argentina é o país que mais deve dinheiro ao FMI no mundo. Se investimento do FMI, cujo objetivo é ajudar “países de baixo rendimento” a permanecerem ativos no mercado capitalista global, fracassou, será que entrar de cabeça no mercado dolarizado e privatizado funcionará como solução? Quando se trata de conflitos na Ásia Ocidental, a discussão sobre o petróleo é um clichê ultrapassado. Mas se há fumaça, temos que pelo menos considerar a possibilidade de que também há fogo. A escalada dos ataques à Palestina levantou preocupações sobre os preços e o fornecimento global de petróleo. Se o Irã, “o quarto maior fornecedor de petróleo da OPEP”, se envolver (ainda mais) nesse conflito, e, digamos, os EUA forem encorajados a decretar sanções, seria pertinente começar a conceber um plano para lidar com a diminuição do volume de petróleo que está circulando. A revista Time publicou um artigo no final de outubro argumentando que as sanções ao petróleo iraniano são a chave para a “paz” no “Oriente Médio”, estimando que as vendas de petróleo constituem 70% das receitas do governo do Irã. Enquanto isso, Israel tem debatido o potencial de extração de quantidades significativas de xisto betuminoso há algum tempo, uma vez que se acredita que 15% do território israelense esteja em leitos desse xisto. Talvez não seja uma coincidência que o novo presidente da Argentina queira reforçar a sua relação com Israel enquanto tenta livrar-se da YPF, que já foi descrita como “a jogada de xisto mais atraente fora dos EUA”. A relação política e econômica entre a Argentina e Israel não começou com Milei. Perón já tentou conquistar os EUA através de acordos com Israel. Assim, ele acreditou que “remover[ia] o estigma” de que a Argentina tinha se tornado um porto seguro para nazistas após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, enquanto também abriga a maior população judaica da América Latina. Desde então, Israel forneceu equipamento militar à Argentina antes e durante a Guerra das Malvinas contra a Grã-Bretanha, o que se argumenta ser devido à animosidade extrema de Menachem Begin com o mandato britânico da Palestina. Hoje, Milei está ansioso para apoiar a invasão de Israel em Gaza e para seguir os passos de Trump na mudança da embaixada para Jerusalém. Mas mesmo antes da sua vitória, a empresa nacional de água de Israel, Mekorot, já tinha recebido “influência significativa” sobre como os recursos hídricos são atribuídos em várias províncias da Argentina. Depois de ver como essa empresa abordou o abastecimento de água à Palestina, muitos argentinos estão indignados não apenas com a presença dessa empresa no seu próprio país, mas também com o que ela tem feito no exterior. No Brasil, quando Bolsonaro abanou uma bandeira israelense num protesto, os representantes da Confederação Israelita do Brasil (Conib) foram rápidos a rejeitá-la como representativa da posição política da diáspora judaica no país em geral. Não está claro se o mesmo pode ser dito sobre a população judaica argentina. Mas uma coisa é certa: o fanatismo de Milei com Israel não tem nada a ver com o anarquismo, e tudo a ver com o seu amor implacável pelo capitalismo norte-americano. Me parece que ele instrumentaliza a religião para atingir objetivos econômicos, e isso muito provavelmente será às custas de argentinos de todas as religiões, enquanto ele agita sua motosserra da austeridade. As ideologias anarquistas e libertárias visam combater o controle governamental sobre a sociedade, mas o anarquismo nunca significou que esse controle caísse nas mãos de uma instituição ainda mais problemática – o mercado global de ações. É por isso que, historicamente, o anarquismo se desenvolveu em resposta à direção insustentável que a industrialização capitalista tomava no século XIX (em direção à pobreza generalizada). Ao se inspirar no fato de que várias civilizações indígenas prosperaram sem o capitalismo e o Estado, ficou claro para os anarquistas que outro mundo é possível. Acelerar na direção de um capitalismo industrial sem regulamentação é bastante contrário aos princípios do anarquismo, porque apenas agrava a questão da desigualdade econômica. Inegavelmente, a Argentina está numa situação financeira difícil e o seu novo presidente planeja resolvê-la com uma versão ainda mais extrema do sistema financeiro que não deu certo até agora. Como uma personalidade televisiva com ideias econômicas explosivas, Milei conquistou os corações de um eleitorado que está ansioso para preservar o status quo capitalista. Talvez essas ideias não sejam tão explosivas ou inovadoras como ele as faz parecer, são apenas uma tentativa desesperada de proteger um sistema de longa data que não tem dado sinais de funcionar. ____ Escrito por Mirna Wabi-Sabi, fundadora e editora-chefe da Plataforma9. Fotografado por Alisdare Hickson, sob a licença Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA 2.0)

Iranian women have a rich and long-standing legacy of political activism. The origins of the Iranian women’s movement can be traced back to the emergence of independent women’s groups and periodicals during the constitutional revolution of the early twentieth century. Despite women’s active presence and contributions to global political developments of the past century, contemporary historical narratives, by and large, remain characterized by gender-blindness. This book problematizes the systemic sidelining of women’s causes and contributions, not only in the field of historiography, but in Iranian politics at large. It shows that throughout the twentieth century, women’s bodies repeatedly emerged as sites of political contestation while their causes were simultaneously instrumentalized and erased from the masculinist political debate. It ultimately posits that the gendering of history constitutes a vital first step towards developing an Iranian intersectional feminist agenda. Introduction: Women in Contemporary Iranian Activism On International Women’s Day on 8 March 1979, only weeks after the victory of the revolution that overthrew the Shah, thousands of Iranian women marched the snowy streets of Tehran. Disillusioned with the new revolutionary council’s dubious and discriminatory stances towards women, they took to the streets to demand the preservation of their meagre but hard-earned rights and chanted ‘In the dawn of freedom, women have no freedom’. The images of masses of women protesters, many of whom had previously marched the streets in support of the revolution, shocked the world as they rapidly circulated media outlets across the globe. What had fueled this spontaneous expression of collective anger was a series of direct attacks on women’s rights launched by the new regime which included the suspension of an important piece of family legislation that had improved women’s divorce and reproductive rights, and the barring of women from becoming judges. The final nail in the coffin was hammered a day before the march, when Ayatollah Khomeini pronounced that women civil servants should wear the hijab in their place of work. The events of International Women’s Day of 1979 marked the beginning of a long and ongoing struggle for gender equality in post-revolutionary Iran. The seeds of this resistance, however, had been planted nearly seven decades before, a fact that is often historically overlooked. The majority of hitherto historical writings on contemporary Iran have, in fact, failed to account for the important role played by women’s activism in shaping modern Iranian politics and society. Writing gender and women back into the history of Iranian mobilization highlights Iranian women’s long legacy of political activism. It builds on and contributes to an existing body of work by women historians who have embarked on the essential task of combatting the ‘gender-blindness’ which characterizes not just contemporary historical narrations of Iranian activism but the field of historiography in general. Gendering historicization cannot be achieved through the mere annexing of women’s names, stories, and images to the existing male-centric historical narratives. Rather, it requires the re-introduction of gender as a category of analysis from the onset, in a way that fundamentally transforms historicization itself (Najmabadi, 1996). By tracing the origins of the Iranian women’s movement in the constitutional revolution of the early twentieth century, an overview of women’s major political activities throughout various stages of political development in contemporary Iran takes form. Meanwhile, the coercion and cooptation periods of the women’s movement under the Pahlavi I and II eras respectively cannot be overlooked. By closely examining the role and position of women in political opposition groups of the revolutionary period and their subsequent activism and repression in the years following the 1979 revolution, a common thread is traced through all major political developments of the past century. The promises and pitfalls of the women’s movement carry lessons for the future of feminist activism within and outside Iran. A history of the women’s movement in Iran Afsaneh Najmabadi once aptly referred to the general model of historicization in contemporary Iran as one of “Great Men and Grand Ideas” (1996: 102). Much has been written about Iran’s modernization from above since the early 1900s as well as its grassroots histories of conscientization and political activism. These historical narrations are heterogenous and often-times contested in their claims, reflecting ideologies and standpoints from all over the political spectrum. What unites these diverse historical plots, however, is the systemic and effective downplaying, and at times complete erasure, of the role of women (in particular rural, tribal, and working-class women) and their political claims from the collective national memory, rendering modern Iranian historiography centralist, elitist, and undeniably masculinist. (This is an excerpt from the book A History of the Iranian Women's Rights Movement) Get a copy 'A History of the Iranian Women's Rights Movement' here

Thailand is a unique and proud country. Its languages and spirituality stem from a particular intersection between Pali, the sacred language of Theravada Buddhism, and Sanskrit, the sacred language of Hinduism. The Thai monarchy is prominent, and a focus on wealth emanates from not just the culture as a whole, but specifically from people’s spiritual devotion. Any tourist in Thailand is prone to get “templed-out”; there are so many temples, of all sizes and in every corner, that, even in short trips, a foreigner may feel like they’ve had enough and have lost track of which ones they’ve visited. These temples, which are often newly built and thoroughly maintained with white paint and gold leaf, are by no means made for the foreign gaze. In fact, non-practitioners should be made to feel like intruders, surrounded by locals worshipping passionately. This Thai paradigm thoroughly deconstructs the dominant perception in the West that spiritual and material riches are at odds with each other, that all wealth (or a desire for it) is a reflection of soul-less capitalism. It seems to me that the expat community in Thailand is largely composed of white men who married Thai women. The issue of sex tourism, in combination with a newly instated lift on weed criminalization, gives some spots of Bangkok a vivid red-light Amsterdam vibe. And even though there is widespread religious conservatism perceiving these expressions of drug-use and sex-entertainment as taboo, the vision of wealth and material prosperity somehow trumps other aspects of religious morality. Perhaps wealth and prosperity are significant parts of Thai devotion, and are not necessarily at odds with other spiritual practices and beliefs. Temples have safes, there is no shortage of gold, and both money and gold leaf are ritualized. This, in itself, is far from unusual to anyone who grew up witnessing Catholic devotion, and the ornate set-up of cathedrals. But what stood out to me, due to my fascination with mini ponds, is the amount of expensive water features in public spaces. “Water plays an important role in many religions” (page 5), and the idea of holy water is familiar enough to Christians. But in Thailand, water features seem to go beyond the realm of temple; they have a personal function, and are implemented at every opportunity. Ceramic potted ponds with gorgeous (and pricey) water lilies, water pumps for fountains, reflecting pools etc, are everywhere. Not to mention city-wide festivals, which are all about throwing water at everyone and everything on the streets. Thai tradition clearly observes water in a particular way. When inquiring about why so many entrances of establishments have small but lavish water features, people explain it in different ways. Expats will say it’s just pretty, or it comes from Feng Shui. Some locals will say that, traditionally, it was common to have water available for people to drink during drought season, or for people to wash their feet before entering the house. And some will say frankly – it is something that attracts wealth. A 2022 paper from Naresuan University, named “Water” in the Regime of Thai Traditions and Rituals, describes this observance of water as stemming from “great” and “little” traditions – “great” as in from Buddhist and Hindu scriptures, and “little” as in from farming and ancestry. Obviously, farming requires water, but rice farming, in particular, requires flooding. Rice doesn’t need flooded land to thrive, but it does thrive in it while other plants don’t. So, historically, this staple of the Thai diet has informed Thai culture and how it approaches the ebbs and flows of drought and rain seasons; the comings and goings of water as a practical approach to prosperity and abundance. The Isan people of northern Thailand, for instance, are said to consecrate water in a ritual for rice growing (page 116). Water, in Thai tradition, as it observes Buddhist and Hindu scriptures, symbolizes “the medium to connect this worldly to the sacred world”. Water is a Goddess named Phra Mae Thorani, who is portrayed in the logos of water distribution companies all over Thailand and of the country’s oldest political party. Water is also where Nagas live (page 30), mythical beings which protect treasures, among other things. According to ancient Thai legend, snakes, as the animist representation of these deities, are not to be feared but to be admired. Though they may represent danger when angered, they may also grant wishes of wealth and prosperity. This is perhaps the most apt representation of a bifurcation in wealth seeking – prosperous agency, or exploitative greed. Nagas can bring you rain, and it will either water your crops or flood your home; a reminder to always nurture a righteous heart when seeing riches. Alongside water and its fauna, flora seems to hold tremendous spiritual significance in Thai folklore. Aquatic flowers such as the lotus (Nelumbo nucifera) and the water lily (Nymphaea) are also symbolic in both Buddhism and Hinduism, and they are named the same in Thai (ดอกบัว). Water lilies, in particular, can be widely seen in ceramic potted ponds surrounding temples, shrines, royal buildings, and even store fronts in Thailand’s major cities, usually accompanied by small beta fish, which are native to the country. None of these water features, with or without fish, seem to have mosquito larvae; they sometimes have tadpoles, snails or backswimmers (when they are not chemically treated or are mechanical fountains). A pink cultivar of the Nymphaea, native to Thailand, is named after Nang Kwak, the goddess of fortune. This “Beckoning Lady has long been used by low-level merchants and vendors, and is the one charm whose initial meaning lay with the market” (page 365 of the article The Sacred Geography of Bangkok's Markets). In this research, the author describes ‘mercantile spirituality’ as nothing new, though its popularity has increased in recent decades. A modern ‘prosperity religion’ shows that, in light of a rapidly expanding capitalist landscape, spirituality, folklore and tradition are not at odds with modernity. Thai culture shows how animism and polytheism are contemporary spiritual practices by definition. In the West, where monotheistic religions have brutally instated themselves as the norm, paganism is so often framed as of the past, and its practitioners reduced as historical reenactors. But framing Buddhism as a replacement of paganism, for instance, is completely irrelevant and inadequate when observing the civic religion of Thailand. The amalgamation of Thai folklore, Buddhism and Hinduism is anything but waned in the face of rampant metropolization. There is nothing inherently contradictory about bringing these spiritual traditions and beliefs into the realm of contemporary capitalist societies, in fact, they may be a lifeline in the soullessness of major cities. Mirna Wabi-Sabi Mirna is a Brazilian writer, site editor at Gods and Radicals and founder of Plataforma9. She is the author of the book Anarcho-transcreation and producer of several other titles under the P9 press.

Indigenous people in Brazil mirror the situation of those displaced by war, in the sense that they don’t comply with the principle of dividing up land according to property ownership or national borders. Perhaps instead of trying to save Other people from destruction, we ought to stop destroying. And this is work we have to do for ourselves, not for the other. We need the eradication of the paradigms which threaten Indigenous peoples more than we need to tell Indigenous peoples we validate them. Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi Read it at Abeautifulresistance.org

Rather than looking to ‘save’ others, we should aim to dismantle the hatred and exploitation of those who reject property and national borders. It is commonplace in Brazil for people or institutions to make a symbolic gesture towards an Indigenous community, and then frame it as a major advance for their rights. One familiar example, for instance, is a museum paying Indigenous people to build a traditional structure of theirs on its site. Or, a person showing up at an Indigenous settlement and saying hello, taking school kids to visit, or buying jewellery from communities – as if any of these things were a major political statement. They’re not. They’re basic decency, like paying for goods and services, or treating someone else as a human being. Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi Read at Opendemocracy.net

Originally published at OpenDemocracy in Brazilian Portuguese. Implementing a foreign principle on weapons policy can further exacerbate economic inequalities. The year 2021 was marked by legal incentives by the Bolsonaro administration to loosen restrictions around gun ownership in Brazil. In an effort to emulate the United States’ approach to guns, the president ran his election campaign on this platform, popularizing the gun hand gesture and eventually introducing 30 decrees on the subject. Of the decrees passed loosening “registration and acquisition of weapons and ammunition by hunters, collectors and shooters” (among other things), some later faced resistance from Senate. This resistance is unsurprising since, according to a census from 2019 (his first year in office), the majority of the Brazilian population strongly disagreed with the idea that loosening gun laws would translate into more public safety. There is also widespread agreement among researchers and NGOs that lax arrangements around gun ownership will exacerbate violence, and will encourage the already existing illegal arms trade in the country to grow and cheapen. Deviation from legal arms into illegality was already an issue before these decrees, with nearly 20 thousand weapons in the 10 years leading up to 2016, when the report was published by a parliamentary inquiry commission. This means that popularizing gun culture in Brazil is not about combatting organized crime, to the contrary — it will increase its supply of weapons. The issues with implementing a political principle from the United States regarding guns in Brazil, aside from it not even working in its country of origin, is that Brazilian society has starker wealth inequality. This class disparity is represented in the demographic which takes a stance on the gun issue. According to the census report from 2019, “of those interviewed who said they were in favor of making firearm ownership more flexible, most earn more than five minimum wages”. Meanwhile, “seven out of ten residents of Brazilian peripheries disagreed with the flexibilization gun possession”. In other words, the vast majority of those in support of strict gun control live closer to where organized crime operates. While a wealthier portion of the population which can afford to live in so-called safer neighborhoods tend to be supportive of loosening restrictions. In the United States, the issue of class permeates the debate on gun control from a slightly different place. A 2017 study describes “economic setbacks” as a main source of emotional attachment to gun ownership, a right which is already vastly granted in the country. This means that in the US, financial insecurity may motivate gun ownership — as a source of empowerment. The demographic of Brazilians who earn at least five times more than minimum wage may not be as distant from the demographic in the United States of people who feel economically disenfranchised. The social and historical context, however, informs not only how this demographic is described, but also how these individuals describe themselves. Someone who considers themselves upper middle class in Brazil could be considered lower middle class in the United States. Nevertheless, an aversion towards poverty, and the poor, is a common ground. Gender and race also mark gun control sentiments in both countries. In the US, those “who have expectations about what it means to be a white man in America today that are not being met” are more likely to be interested in gun ownership. In Brazil, race is more difficult to dichotomize due to a colonial history which encouraged miscegenation as opposed to segregation. Nevertheless, race does tend to follow class lines, since black Brazilians make up over 70% of the poorest segment of the population, and whites make up 70% of the richest. Considering these numbers, it should be noted that, in both countries, poorer black people are more likely to become victims of gun violence. Another major concern around loosening gun laws, perhaps more so in Brazil than in the United States, is a potential increase in femicide. “The term ‘femicide’ (femicidio) was particularly embraced in Latin America”, but it doesn’t mean it’s more widespread in that region. Brazil’s off-the-charts level of violence against women is a direct result of the fact that there has been an effort to name the issue. In the US, categorizing femicides as any other homicide may mask the fact that 92% of them are perpetrated by men the women knew. Apprehension around stating that these homicides happened because these victims are women doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the assailants are their boyfriends or husbands. It also doesn’t change the fact that “poverty is associated with domestic abuse”. Making it easier to own guns and keep them in family homes will likely exacerbate the already existing issue of domestic violence and the vulnerability of women faced with financial insecurity. For each situation a gun can be used to protect a family from a break-in, there are several other situations where this gun can be used to inflict harm on this family, either by inflaming domestic violence, expansion of the illegal arms trade by organized crime, or disproportionally victimizing marginalized households. Trigger Warning — The photos below are disturbing and show death. Operation of the Military and Civil Police, on July 21, leaves 19 dead in Complexo do Alemão | Fabio Teixeira The Role of the Police Police operations in Brazilian peripheries are notoriously deadly, and those killed are often uninvolved in criminal activities. They are just at the wrong place at the wrong time. If law enforcement institutions were excelling at their job, there would be no need for the State to transfer the responsibility of providing security to civilians. However, Bolsonaro’s encouragement of force, of violence, resonates with military police officers — who often become his avid supporters. As a researcher of public safety puts it, for an individual to support a politician who encourages amateurs to take on a role which is one’s professional responsibility is a "merely ideological question, not practical". This ideology, which loosely signifies traditional family values, conservative religious principles and gender roles, have no practical bearing in lowering violent crime rates, combatting organized crime, or protecting families in their homes. Last month, nearly 20 people were killed in a shoot-out between the military police and alleged drug traffickers in a neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro called Alemão Complex. Less than half of those killed had criminal records, at least two of them weren’t suspects at all, and one was a cop. This scenario is reoccurring; a recent report by the federal university of Niterói (UFF), financed by a German political foundation called Heinrich Böll, states that between 2007 and 2021, “17,929 operations were carried out by police in Rio de Janeiro. Of this total, 593 police operations resulted in massacres, totaling 2374 deaths.” There is no evidence showing these operations have been effective in combatting or stifling organized crime organizations, they have been effective in sustaining a prolonged reign of terror in marginalized communities. The one thing everyone seems to agree on is that wealth inequality is progressively becoming intolerable. Poverty, crime, and the need for a safer society are concerns which possibly transcend ideological lines. The question is what the practical steps are to improve a social condition which leads to brutal violence from north to south of the globe. Could the solution be more guns, or more human dignity? _____ Mirna Wabi-sabi

Mirna Wabi-Sabi Tate Modern is the one museum people talk about when they discuss art in London. Never have I heard the Courtauld be mentioned in this context. To be fair, it’s really more of an institute or gallery, and the collection is less vast and diverse than Tate’s. But it has some major pieces on display, most notorious of them perhaps being Van Gogh’s self-portrait without the ear, and several pieces by Gauguin, who was somehow involved in the ear-cutting situation. The whole place is a succinct gathering of major artists like Manet, Degas, Cézanne, Renoir, and several Flemish, Medieval and Renaissance masters, in a fantastic building with embellished cantilevered stone stairs. Perhaps even more attention-grabbing than the pedigree of the collection in the classic limestone building is the exhibition that opened on the 17th of June. “Fakes from the Collection” Yes, fake as in forgery. The Art and Artifice expo explores not only several types of fake pieces but also different types of intent behind their production. Of course, some were produced for financial gain, such as those made to look old and expensive but containing paint pigments or nails which didn’t exist in the period they were claimed to be from. Nineteenth century forgeries of medieval paintings on wood, for instance, were uncovered because nails from the alleged date of the work were not produced in the size and standard shape revealed in the x-rays of the pieces. Others had fake signatures and were claimed to be from the “study” days of the artist. The most fun, though, are the ones with unexpected stories. Some pieces were created to fool Nazis, as was the case of the forger Han van Meegeren. He created fake Vermeers during the Second World War and sold it to elite members of the Nazi party. The one on display at the exhibition is a forgery of a painting by van Baburen, a piece featured on the background of two of Vermeer’s paintings. Van Meegeren was applauded for this scheme, not only because of its disruption of the notorious looting and mistreatment of fine art by the Nazis, but also because his forgeries became a valuable technique investigation tool for art students at the institute. Other pieces were just artists practicing their craft by replicating classics, which were never meant to deceive a buyer. And in some cases, researchers still don’t know the true authorship of the piece, as is the case of a Boitard drawing. The technology for producing smooth, grid-less paper wasn’t widely available until decades after his death, but it is possible, though unlikely, that he came across it in the last year of his life, around the time of the ‘revolutionary invention’. Attendees are invited to closely examine the paper with large hand-held magnifying glasses to identify the differences between each drawing. It’s hard to not see parallels with generative artificial intelligence today and its potentially deceitful images. Deceit is nothing new, in media or art, and whenever a new technology comes around, we must adapt our methods of interpretation and consumption of its content. If it’s a new paper-making method, paint pigment, nail type, or digital image-editing feature, innovation is unstoppable, and change is inevitable. How we handle the technological changes of our era, and our ability to keep up with them, defines whether innovation symbolizes the advancement or detriment of society. Earlier in June, just a few days before the opening of the Courtauld expo, NPR published an article with suggestions on how to identify if a digital image was fake; meaning, generated by AI. As a tool, we know that nowadays generative AI is unable to realistically portray hands, teeth, accessories such as jewelry, and complex backgrounds. Holding up a proverbial magnifying glass to these details can give away fake images with relative ease. Some of the images believed to be real and widely shared online, such as the one of the Pope wearing a large white puffy coat, could have easily been, and were, exposed as fakes, though not soon enough to prevent them from going viral. Looking at history, we see that the struggle to identify forgeries is not unprecedented in the realm of images made to deceive in high art or in mass media. The same way it is possible to be unsure of the veracity of a signature, we may be unsure of the source of a realistic-looking digital image. All this means is that we must keep up with technological advances and invest in a modernized education system. Anyone is bound to slip occasionally and fall for a fake. Some details might slip through the cracks, some days the vetting process might be sloppier than others, that’s natural. Not to mention that it’s just a matter of time until digital technology is updated to make AI better at portraying things like hands and we will be caught off guard once again. AI’s current inability to produce realistic images of hands it quite comical, considering hands may be the very first subject of human artistic expression. From ancient pictographs made 40 thousand years ago until classics of the 19th century, hands have been a major focus of human art, especially for painters. Even when they are hidden, hands stand out and become a source of speculation and conspicuous meaning. Da Vinci was notorious for his study of hands, and Michelangelo created one of the most reproduced pair of hands in Western history–in The Creation of Adam. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, when a wave of elite European portraits depicted men with hands hidden in their jackets, it was speculated that perhaps paintings were cheaper when the painter didn’t have to focus on drawing fingers. There is no evidence for that. The pose most likely symbolized power and status, as it was popular with people like Napoleon, for whom money was no obstacle. Either way, we were never expected to take art, and media, at face value. For hundreds of years, we’ve had to keep vetting processes and analyses up to date, we’ve had to learn to ask the right questions at the right time, and this just happens to still be as true now as ever. High-tech is not synonymous with high standards, and nothing corroborates this idea more than high art. Will a robot soon produce a perfect forgery, or perhaps its own masterpiece? If it does, this threat is possibly a tale as old as art itself. Trying to halt innovation will be futile, and expecting change to not meet any resistance is also unrealistic. We’ve known that art made without heart, made as nothing more than a replica, is not valuable. And perceiving value does take training. It takes a robust education that incentivizes critical analysis and requires resources. A better use of our time is learning how to hold up a magnifying glass, and not so much campaigning against technologies which may or may not be used for malignant deceit. +++ Mirna Wabi-Sabi

By Mirna Wabi-Sabi ChatGPT is a subject that provokes much debate about the future of education in the world of writing. Artificial Intelligence which writes these texts, correct and well researched, is a threat only to educators and writers who expect good writing to be mechanical and inauthentic. I rarely describe texts as “poorly” written, because often writing problems have more to do with failing to achieve a purpose than with the quality of word grouping. If your purpose as a writer is to reach a certain audience with a certain message, but your writing isn't meeting that goal, that's not bad writing, it's ineffective writing. On the other hand, a text full of grammatical “errors” can be extremely effective, therefore very well written. Every person who writes has created texts that failed in their purpose. Nobody is born knowing how to write effectively, and the great challenge of writing work is to be willing to fine tune the message you want to convey to an audience and sharpen the tools you use to deliver that message. ChatGPT is a robot. When a robot is authentic, using its writing as your own would be plagiarism. But this is not the reality we live in. A text generated by Artificial Intelligence is nothing more than a text vending machine. And the nutritional value of what comes out of it is just that — something ultra-processed, industrialized, that comes out the same from all machines, it's effective in times of scarcity, but if you live on only that, you'll probably die early. What are we doing, as writers and educators, to encourage authenticity? If authenticity does not exist in the classroom, the class is mediocre and encourages students to be mediocre. If a test is easily hacked by a robot, it is not effective, and anyone who passes it will not do an effective job. Not to mention that there are already tools like GPTZero that aim to reveal whether a text was mostly written by Artificial Intelligence, just as there have been, for a long time, several tools that aim to detect plagiarism. ChatGPT is not a threat, the threat is a long-standing educational system that fails year after year to train young people to produce truthful and impactful intellectual content. If we are concerned about ChatGPT, in reality we should be panicking about how the education system encourages imitation and insincerity.

It feels like we live in unprecedented times, and, indeed, no one alive has witnessed a viral pandemic of this magnitude before. This isn’t, however, the 1st viral pandemic in history, which is why political commentators have drawn parallels to others such as SARS, Ebola, Influenza, etc. Based on where I live, though, the parallel that stands out is with mosquito-borne infections; Dengue, Chikungunya, Yellow Fever, and so on. Public health campaigns about Dengue prevention in Brazil were constant throughout my lifetime, and it never occurred to me or anyone around me to question its message — mosquitoes transmit it, and clean stagnant water is what they need to proliferate. Therefore, everyone ought to do everything they can to minimize these vectors for disease, since the mosquito born in your house respects no property line and will feed on anyone. This has never become a partisan issue, the science behind it has not been questioned, and slacking on the public health requirements is frowned upon. Despite not having learned to distinguish between mosquito larvae and that of other animals, and considering I am highly suspicious of government and authority in general, questioning the science behind the life cycle of a mosquito that transmits disease never occurred to me. I am a woman who lives alone, and the Dengue inspector is the only strange man from the street I allow in my home. Every small artificial body of water I see comes with a flashing danger sign, and I have developed muscle memory from flipping over water-gathering containers. In 2008, NPR published a piece describing mosquitoes as “nature’s Viet Congs”; defenders “of ferns, butterflies, beetles and ants from humankind”. At the time, I thought that made sense. Cities grow, take the place of the forest, and mosquitoes are the nuisance which remains. But upon further reflection, especially in the COVID context, the analogy seems inept. Aren’t Viet Congs part of humanity, and humanity part of nature? Most importantly, weren’t there humans living in the forest before mosquitoes began trying to repel humanity from ‘nature’? How did indigenous people handle virus-drenched-mosquitoes? The answer is: they didn’t. There was no Dengue before colonization. It is widely known that viral infections were weaponized against native civilizations by settlers, the chicken-pox blanket as the most notorious example. The Aedes aegypti, the mosquito which spreads Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika, Yellow fever and other viruses, came as eggs in water brought in ships from Africa in the 16th century. By the 18th century, there had been outbreaks of infections in 3 or more continents at once. Well, we are here, now, still struggling to keep this virus under control. The approach has been to make our urban living environment unwelcoming to these creatures. Meaning: no excess of plants that give them shade and block the breeze which sweeps them away; no organic matter because they contain plant sugars mosquitoes feed on; no irregular, dirty surfaces that can hold the liquid for them to lay eggs in. What this also leads to is the expulsion of any other living thing aside from humans. No plants also means no butterflies; no organic matter also means no worms and fertility for plants; no water also means no frogs and dragonflies. The paradox is the need for more water, plants and organic matter to attract more animals that are natural predators of mosquitoes and their larvae. Biodiversity has a positive cascading effect, where water attracts mosquitoes, which attract frogs who eat mosquitoes. If adding to the mix beetles, birds, spiders, lizards, snails, ants, butterflies, dragonflies, worms, water striders, etc., we can see that mosquitoes come alone when there is a random tire getting rained on by the side of the road. In some ways, it’s like the principle of a vaccine — don’t avoid the problem, safely expose yourself to it and find a healthy organic balance to fight it. Balance is no simple thing to achieve, much less in the scale of a whole planet. Perhaps the change towards balance we can achieve lies in the realm of our personal lives and a shift in perspective. This is already a lot of work, but it’s where every great idea starts. To question authority and its untrustworthy institutions does not come at the expense of learning biology. In fact, it relies on this knowledge — how else will we know the fallacies of the system and gather the tools to speak the truth about power? Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi She is site editor of Gods and Radicals, founder and editor-in-chief of Plataforma9, author of the book Anarcho-Transcreation, and a political commentator through writing, editing, teaching and translating. Originally published at Abeautifulresistance.org

The average citizen knows very little about nature and their local ecosystems. It has become easier for us to imagine a mosquito that is genetically engineered to be sterile, than to learn about which animals in our area are their natural predators. This is probably because it is easier to vote for a politician who might endorse research and implement anti-dengue-fever policies, than to observe and study the behaviour of local wild-life. Most of us don’t have the time and resources for this type of research, but, most importantly, we lack interest or motivation (who knows which came first). We don’t need to look closely, however, to see that government policies and politicians are flawed and misguided, specially with regard to environmentally sustainable practices. An alternative to continuing relying on them could be taking certain things into our own hands, even in the microcosm of our own lives. Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi Read it at Abeautifulresistance.org

The debate of whether or not to vote, or for whom, ought to be replaced with the conversation of whether voting is the only way to be politically active, or if the National scale is what matters the most. The Bolsonaro administration has made it difficult to refrain from voting in the upcoming presidential elections. For those who avoid engaging in electoral politics, it is no simple task to continue this practice in face of his grotesque stances and policies. On the one hand, it seems to me that Presidents do less in terms of actual policy and more in terms of ‘selling’ to the general public and manufacturing support for whatever policy is already on the way — which is in the interest of a global Capitalist economic system as opposed to the interests of voters. On the other hand, the principles held by these individuals in major administrative roles have the power to stir public discourse and behaviors, normalizing retrogressive values which have concrete repercussions in society at large. Engaging in local lobbying initiatives, however, puts into perspective what the actual outcomes of voting are in our immediate environment. I live in an area of Brazil with unique rocky Atlantic forest vegetation — unique enough to grant the demarcation of a nature protection reserve called Tiririca ‘Mountain range’ (Serra da Tiririca). This demarcation came after plenty of damage was already done by the swift and massive real estate industry of the last 40 years. The land my house was built on used to be a swamp, where alligators and birds lived, as well as rare plants. Unfortunately, my house is one of the few if not the only one in the neighborhood where spontaneous growth is allowed, and animals are welcomed rather than shunned or killed. Written by Mirna Wabi-Sabi Read it in full at Abeautifulresistance.org