ItsWhitneyBitch
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jun 9, 2024
Nicholas Robert Rekieta / Rekieta "Law" / Actually Criminal / @NickRekieta - Polysubstance enthusiast, "Lawtuber" turned Dabbleverse streamer, swinger, "whitebread ass nigga", snuffs animals for fun, visits 🇯🇲 BBC resorts. Legally a cuckold who lost his license to practice law. Wife's bod worth $50. The normies even know.
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- Joined
- Feb 19, 2024
I can only imagine how busy and stressful it can be to keep the site going, simply because of this admirable refusal to give him to the troons, and basically everything the CEO of Reddit already has, as well as other cooperations and companies that want to change the site. That's really respectable. Any "social cue understanding" person probably would have given in a long time ago just so they can relieve themselves of all the frivolous legal battles.
I bet you a million dollars (from Eric July's campaigns) that Nick Rekieta thinks he himself is exactly the same way, and the same description applies to him. So when he does cocaine, abuses his kids, overshares about his limp-dick sex life, that he's refusing to give in to all the bad people that want to change him.
That is what makes him a punchable faggot. Look at him.
- Joined
- Nov 26, 2016
This is just retarded. I can't believe the depths of nihilism some of these fucks would sink to in order to defend their edaddy. If any leftist did this, they'll be all over it asking for the crucifix and the torches.
Even if the kids don't know, drugs change a person's behaviour, inhibition and attitude, they will see there's something different and they will be affected.
Let alone the presence of two strangers. Kids aren't stupid, the same way parents fighting will affect children. My parents thought their dumb bickering behind doors never affected me because I never "saw" it but that's just not true. I can hear the loud voices, I would even sneak out to listen what's going on because it was quite worrying. They only learned of it after I told them and for the worse, they just stopped hiding it.
If Balldo's kids found out mummy and daddy were doing drugs and swinging, they'll just do it openly. It feeds into their exhibitionism too. Balldo spoken at length how pissed he was because his parents never divulged any bedroom business with him.
Balldo is a horrible parent. Those balldowashers should be neutered.
- Joined
- Oct 6, 2021
I hope they get their balldos stuck taking them off and end up with twisted testicles.
- Joined
- Dec 13, 2022
I don't want anything. Nick can carry on doing whatever he wants. As long as he continues to behave in an entertaining manner, I'll continue to watch and laugh.
The question really is, what does Nick want? If he wants to continue being a global laughing stock, he should just carry on behaving in the way that he has for the last couple of years. If he cares about things like his reputation, his wife and his children, he should probably change his behaviour somewhat, but I don't care one way or another. There'll always be another lolcow coming along if Rekieta stopped acting llike a moron.
Pistoleer
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Nov 27, 2019
I’ve been out of the loop with lolcow happenings for a while now and came back because I watched a dude do almost the exact thing Rekieta is doing with the drugs and swinging. He had 2 kids and ended up with one child going full blown psycho activist troon, and the other disappeared and disowned the entire family.
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2019
You'll never get an accurate list of symptoms for a psychiatric disorder just by Googling it. They're all abridged bullshit that leaves out important context and explanations of symptoms. Here are the relevant sections of the DSM-5 entry for ODD:
Again, this is why it's important to go to the source. The DSM-5 has an entire differential diagnosis section for each disorder:
You'll notice there isn't a subsection for Antisocial Personality Disorder here. That's because ODD is primarily diagnosed in children, while ASPD can only be diagnosed in patients who are 18 or older. To understand the difference between ODD and ASPD you'll want to look at the section for Conduct Disorder instead, as it's essentially the childhood equivalent / precursor to ASPD. Childhood history of Conduct Disorder is actually a prerequisite for ASPD diagnosis:
So basically the difference is that ODD is less severe and doesn't involve violence towards people or animals, destruction of property, or a pattern of theft and deceit. People with ASPD routinely violate the basic rights of others without remorse, whereas people with ODD just tend to chimp out and be belligerent dickheads.
ODD is a legitimate diagnosis, but you're right that it gets tossed around as a buzzword in the same way as autism or BPD or schizo. Someone can be oppositional and defiant towards people who antagonize them without actually having ODD, but people will still slap them with that label because it's concise and catchy. Most people aren't psychiatrists, so you can't really judge the validity of a disorder by the way most people use the label.
- Joined
- Sep 28, 2022
yeah knowing or not knowing makes almost no difference. the real impact comes from seeing your parents behave erratically, irrationally and irresponsibly, and the consequences this behavior of theirs has on your own life (no food, no clothes, house is a mess, other people talking shit about your family, etc)
- Joined
- Jul 31, 2021
This is standard narc behavior. I see men do it all the time online nowadays. I agree it used to mostly be something I saw women do but more and more I see effeminate little bitches like Nick doing it. Hilariously you see this a lot from the incel/MGTOW type communities (like Dick & co.). Excessively sperging about women can be the gateway drug to trooning out.
I don't know what specific disgnosis, if any, that it would fall under, but Nick definitely has some sort of personality issue with intentionally rebeling against any advice given to him. I am not a psychiatrist but he has cluster B traits. I have never known anyone actually diagnosed with narcissistic or antisocial personality disorders because I have never met one who thought it was a problem amd sought treatment. It is by its nature untreatable in my opinion because it can't be medicated effectively and the person will not comply with modifying therapy.
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Um...
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Oct 16, 2016
Lol the fade doesn’t work with that receding hairline, buddy
You need to go to a different salon. Also mow your grass.
You need to go to a different salon. Also mow your grass.
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gang weeder
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Feb 12, 2022
It's doubly pathetic because it's the opposite of what a properly masculine man would do. A man would either say what he has to say directly or just shut the fuck up and not say anything at all. Nick's behavior is that of a womanly faggot.
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2015
Has Nick reacted to his defenders using his own children as the scapegoats for the drugs?
Can of Spam
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 5, 2024
Isn't that something the kids really should have been doing at this point, since they should have been stepping up and running the household while mommy and daddy do rails of cocaine off the collective asses of "auntie corner demon and uncle cuck"?
Catgirl Tyranid
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2021
Why would he? He doesn't want to take the flak for blaming his own kids, but given the leeches comment I seriously doubt he find anything wrong with other people doing it on his behalf.
- Joined
- Jan 9, 2023
50 Shades of Balldo
@anionfarflung recent deep dives through the balldoverse on FB, led me to go back and revisit some stuff... As you are probably aware, Rackets used to write essays for his friends groups on FB for whatever reason. The topics of his musings varied by whatever transient interest he had at the time.
I did capture this screenshot of his review of 50 Shades of Grey, and thought it was amusing.
Link:
I don't believe you can archive fb links due to needing to be logged in
He has some good stuff on his Facebook that you may want to use.
This is pretty basic Protestant stuff until you get the to the last paragraph:
Link he mentioned in post
Here are his faith based essays he has written on FB:
There’s an ongoing struggle in our world between two indomitable and un-falsifiable foes. The argument is either relatively new or relatively old (depending on which side you fall). Simplified, the argument is pitched as evolutionism vs. creationism. Really, though, that doesn’t encompass the true question or adequately detail the major factions; the real question is old earth vs. young earth.
Evolution vs. creation is too broad-brush. Many creationists believe in a divinely manifested evolution; finding God as creator doesn’t preclude the tools he may have used to develop his creation. So, if the rift isn’t believers vs. non-believers it must lie somewhere else. On the surface, many would say the rift is between biblical literalists, and everyone else. I think this is incomplete (as I will illustrate) but it’s a good distinction to start from because many of us have had a discussion where someone views the creation story of the bible as a positive, literal assertion of history.
I can jive with this viewpoint. I run into trouble because I have a basic disagreement, not with the literal truth of the biblical record, but with the problems associated with assumptions made by young-earth creationists and with the functional problems of ancient-author understandings of the universe we know exists. I think the Genesis account of creation is true, but I would imagine (and have personally experienced) that my reading of Genesis varies greatly from many young-earth creationists out there. I think Genesis, first and foremost, is not intended as a science lesson. It establishes God as creator, man as caretaker, man in the image of God, and it establishes man as flawed.
Young-earthers assert that the earth is approximately 10,000-15,000 years old, based on the biblical genealogy record. Again, as I will demonstrate, I’m ok with this estimation of the earth’s age, but not in any conventional sense or the sense shared by Young-earthers.
This is where my analysis gets a little heady, and probably overly wordy. I think that both old and young earth theories are concurrently true. I know, this seems weird, but follow me. We’ll start with some basic premises I need you to accept; I don’t think they’re much of a stretch (unless you are an atheist). I am operating under the premise that God created the universe; this necessarily means that God existed before and thus exists outside of our universe. I also need you to understand that time, as we understand it and as I discuss it, is a physical dimension of our universe.
Modern physics tells us that time is a physical dimension, much like the traditional X, Y, Z axes that we all hated in geometry. The key difference between temporal [time] dimensions and the spatial dimensions is our method for navigating them. We navigate time on an increasing axis and have not been able to travel in the opposite direction, yet. In the spatial dimensions we are free to traverse both positively and negatively (though, one could argue that this is not true if we look past relativistic physics, that’s a separate discussion). Many assume that this means we experience time on a fixed vector, but this isn’t true. The passage of time (both perceived and real) is subjective to our state of mind [perceived] and the speed we are travelling [real]. Relativity postulates and experiments have shown that objects moving at a higher velocity literally move through time at a slower rate.
Math is not hindered as we are in its time-travelling abilities and physicists use math to “travel back in time” with relative frequency. With math, and its ability to move forward or backward through time, we are able to travel along all dimensions both forward and backwards. I am spending a lot of time on this because it’s important to understand that our perception of time is limited to forward, but time itself is not limited to forward.
This temporal freedom tells us that time, both “past” and “future” (or positive and negative) exists already. We know that “now” is relative to your motion, so this instant isn’t the only instant that exists, but the totality of instants must exist for time to play out the way it does. Time exists inside our universe, not outside. This is important because it means that God is not affected by time; God created time at the same moment he created space.
I know this is getting really cerebral but you must understand this concept because time is exactly like space. If time is exactly like space, then the idea that time “started” at zero is false. There isn’t a “start” to space; there isn’t a start to time. Maybe that’s too simplistic, there isn’t a “linear” start to space that then progresses to an end of space; there is a starting point (as indefinable as a single point in the universe can be) but there is no ending point. Time is identical in that time must have started somewhere, but the start is irrespective of its existence.
Basically, when God created space, he created all of it; it follows that he must also have created all of time. We have labeled “the beginning of time” relative to our current position and our experience of time in only a positive direction. That, however, is like saying one end of a road is the beginning and the other is the end: this can only be true if you travel in one direction, but on a two way road, those points can be reversed. Further, we have no idea where the builders actually started when they made the road; they may have started in the middle.
This is where the phasic-timetable comes through. Since God created the totality of time in the same instant, his entry point into creation is irrelevant to the passage of time. God’s creation point has absolutely nothing to do with year zero. It’s like saying a baker made a loaf of bread starting from one end.
Since God’s entry into the timeline is irrelevant, there’s nothing precluding both a biblical timetable (including a literal six-day creation) and our current conceptions of an old-earth/old-universe existing concurrently. Both are possible simultaneously. When you want to get really heady, consider the physical possibility that the actual date of the creation is in the future.
Today, God punched me in the face…in the good way.
I don’t know you, but there are times when I will struggle to resolve something; some image, some conflict, or some question for a really long time to no end. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t spend every waking minute pondering some cosmic mystery, but in quiet times my mind will wander back to the subject. Occasionally, something will pop the lock on that struggle, and the image will slam itself into my brain; I gain new perspective.
For years I have struggled with the trinity, that God is simultaneously three beings and one being. They are all distinct, and also distinctly God; it’s a strange concept. Let me clarify, however, that I haven’t struggled with God being the trinity, but there are inherent problems with wrapping your mind around an unfathomable being. I was having trouble with the image, with the reality of what it meant. Today in church, God popped the lock on this image, and I see things in a new way.
Quick background: I shop at Office Max sometimes, we started a book study on Crazy Love at church, and the sermon today involved Jesus being the Word of God (or the Greek word Logos, as used by John). You now have everything you need to follow my story.
The other day, at Office Max, Kayla and I were looking at printers. I was tempted by a printer which had a 3D scanner; this amazing device can take a real object and then print a 2D copy of it, amazing! Yeah, not when I realized that we’ve had cameras that produce 2D pictures and video for over a century, not so impressive after that realization. Anyhow, the concept is pretty interesting when we think about imaging, and it ties into the trinity in a weird way. Genesis tells us that we are made in the very image of God; we are of God, we resemble God, we can relate to God because of how we were made. We are not God; we can relate, but we cannot comprehend. We can do amazing things, but it pales in scope and comparison to the raw creative power that is God. We are a photocopy, a facsimile of God; it’s like God took a 3D scanner and made a print-off of himself (or a couple billion print-offs, however you want to look at it).
The first chapter of Crazy Love talks about how big God really is. This being created time! Our universe burst into existence at a mere word! God is pretty big, and the book reminds us how big he is, and how small we sometimes make him. The book asked us to ponder, to try to imagine just how big a God like that is, and to remember when we approach God in prayer, just whom we are addressing; it changed my perspective.
Finally, in church today, our pastor talked about Jesus being the Word of God. The Greek term is Logos, and I don’t think “word” does it justice. According to Wikipedia: “In ordinary, non-technical Greek, logos had a semantic field extending beyond "word " to notions such as, on the one hand, language, talk, statement, speech, conversation, tale, story, prose, proposition, and principle; and on the other hand, thought, reason, account, consideration, esteem, due relation, proportion, and analogy.”
I read this as “a full communication.” Jesus is the embodiment of God’s communication to us; John calls him the Word of God, but “Word” represents so much more than mere speech, language. It is the full transmission of Godliness to Man. God sent us Jesus to show us what God is: His every action, word, movement, and even image shows us the character and characteristics of God.
All three of these concepts converged on me in church today and I got a glimpse of what the trinity means. God is so big that he needs three full beings to encompass what he is. I have an image that springs to mind to illustrate this: I’m sure you’ve seen a triangle chart, or something similar. It’s a way to demonstrate the interaction of three characteristics that are all co-dependent. If you label the three points as: up/down, left/right, and forward/back the triangle would represent the totality of movement. You can only move a certain, maximum speed, but you can alter the direction. For example, if you can move 10 MPH, and you move it all forward, you will be going 10MPH forward, if you split your movement to be 5MPH forward and 5MPH laterally (left/right) you would still be moving 10MPH, but not in just one direction; instead of being at one of the points, you’d be in the middle of one of the edges.
I think of God like this:
The Holy Spirit is the spiritual essence of God, the worship, the prayer, the emotion, the compassion, and the wrath. All that can be felt and divined belongs to the spirit. Jesus, as covered, is the Logos of God, everything that can be communicated or exchanged is embodied by him. God the father is the raw, creative intellect that designed a millennia-spanning nuclear fusion process of stars, and the biological processes that allow a single-cell to split itself into an exact copy to reproduce.
Humans are a single triangle. We can focus our energies in one direction, we can achieve Godliness in spirit, or in communication, or in creation. We can channel the very essence of God. We are imperfect, and I argue that our channeling is never fully pure, always short of hitting a point on the triangle. God is all three triangles; he is at once pure in three directions. He is literally split into three beings to achieve this impossible harmony. His fullness overflows the vessels he built to contain it. We are a 3D image scaled down into 2D.
I realize that even this isn’t a perfect image, but the bigness of this hit me today and I was actually wonderstruck at how God works. A being that can create a galaxy that takes light over a hundred thousand years to cross had to make for Himself three vessels to fill. He gifted us with a tiny portion of each vessel, three in one, that we may experience all aspects of him in our own lives. All of our expression (consciously or not) contains all three aspects of God.
I wish I could fully communicate the image, and its implications to you. I’m finding my words to feel all too human as they fall on the page; and I know it’s already a long read. Thank you for sharing this with me; I hope it pops a lock and opens some image for you.
Today is good.
@anionfarflung recent deep dives through the balldoverse on FB, led me to go back and revisit some stuff... As you are probably aware, Rackets used to write essays for his friends groups on FB for whatever reason. The topics of his musings varied by whatever transient interest he had at the time.
I did capture this screenshot of his review of 50 Shades of Grey, and thought it was amusing.
Link:
I don't believe you can archive fb links due to needing to be logged in
50 Shades of Shut Up
50 Shades of Grey is an American phenomenon. The book has sold over 100 million copies and the Movie grossed over $90 million in its opening 4-day weekend. It has sparked intrigue, a hilarious barrage of jokes, and no small amount of controversy among culture warriors. And, until those culture warriors opened their collectively incorrect mouths, I couldn’t have cared less about this story.
Unfortunately, we live in an age of micro-crusades; people draw relevance from sycophantic throngs hanging on every dire warning, and of course reposting them in a viral orgy of likes and up-votes and ping-backs. Today, truth doesn’t matter, literacy doesn’t matter, assessment doesn’t matter. Only confirmation matters. From confirmation bias that occludes exploration and discussion, to narcissistic confirmation that our criticisms are valid and thus we are valid. We draw value in the spittle-speckled fury of the mob.
Listening to this mob will tell you everything you need to know about 50 Shades of Grey. The story glorifies the BDSM lifestyle, Intimate Partner Violence, stalking, abusive relationships, alcohol abuse, male-dominance, and rape. This story puts consumers at risk because they will try all of these things, especially rape; it is the job of the mob to let us know that rape is dangerous. Don’t read this book, don’t watch this movie, or you will rape and be raped.
Okay, sorry for the melodrama, but this is what brought me to this book. There’s a concept in tort law called res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for: “the thing itself speaks.” This concept, very basically, is that an outlying event itself is sufficient to show that something must have caused it; this was my question, “If 50 Shades is so bad and so poisonous, how is it so wildly successful?” In reading articles and blog posts about the danger (even from psychiatrists! So much authority!) it became apparent that no one was telling the truth, and I began to suspect that approximately zero of them had taken the time to read the piece. I knew they hadn’t seen the movie (it wasn’t out) but I figured someone would bother to verify that what was said had any basis in the book at all. I don’t think so.
So, I apologize for the lofty introduction, but what follows is my literary analysis of 50 Shades of Grey. I am not applying any specific critical theory, because I’m trying to find out what the story is saying, not what I can make it say under a given lens. What I did, however, was approach the story as objectively as possible and find the thrust of the story as well as I could. With that, it begins.
Technical critique:
Okay, everyone has heard that the writing is terrible. Frankly, it is. The book is fraught with syntax errors, usage problems, and abysmal grammar. The jokes about the quality of the prose are warranted, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it.
James is not an expert writer; this is obvious. She tells me everything, she shows me almost nothing. Visuals in the book are punctuated with overt explanations for how I should feel (through the lens of Ana, as a first person narrator) or how I see things, or how others are doing things. When someone isn’t walking “with purpose” or saying something “gravely,” the events are punctuated by Ana’s inner monologue, most commonly with “Crap!” I’m left to interpret nothing and James doesn’t work very hard to make me feel anything, she just instructs me on what to feel; this falls woefully flat.
All of that said, however, is not sufficient to discount the value of a work. Frankly, with editing and revision, this goes away. I have no idea, but I’m willing to wager the publisher wasn’t banking on the sales from this book; spending the resources on a novice writer to polish off some erotica is probably not worth it.
Storytelling:
James fails at prose, but her storytelling chops are more than capable. I dare say, some of her techniques in crafting the story are either the work of a genius, or the luckiest idiot on earth; maybe both.
This is where the analysis is going to hang out for a while. I will try and take you through my experience reading the book as it happened and as I started to realize where the value was.
Starting the book I was immediately in pain. Like an innocent Anastasia Steele I was unprepared for the spanking waiting for me with each page turn. The writing is hollow, the dialogue is stunted, the internal monologue is maddening. Yet, by the end of the very brief virgin chapter, my curiosity was piqued. Ana’s monologue was annoying, but it placed me squarely in the innocence of youth. It appealed to me in a similar way that early Taylor Swift songs (don’t judge!) did; that is, it brought me to a place where attraction was a crush and mystery was novel. I remembered the knee-fluttering, stomach-churning feelings of immature relationships.
James set up the story to take us back before the baggage of relationships and the maturity that we build. Ana is free of the knowledge of successful relationships, or the cynicism of failed ones. She fumbles through with all the skill we could expect from a virgin author but, true to form, she gets it done… messily.
I could see the draw of the book. Reading is an escape, this escape was easy.
However, as I plodded along, I began to notice that James had snuck some core themes into this book; themes other than rape, which is decidedly absent. Looking closer, these were deep and subtle themes, gently massaging and teasing my inner reader. About halfway through the text I was thoroughly convinced that every critique I had read missed the bus entirely, and I knew why, but more on that later.
To understand why the critiques are wrong, I have to do some brief character descriptions on Grey and Steele. You have to know what’s really driving them and why their relationship is so important. Not because it’s the main plot, but because it’s where James’s skill actually comes into play.
Anastasia Steele is the protagonist. She is an impossibly innocent 21 year old senior in college who has managed to live life to this point without a computer, smartphone, or e-mail address. She is also a virgin to the point of never having been kissed or in any sort of relationship to speak of… ever. All the while she is strikingly beautiful, but in the “unexpected” trope of She’s All That. She’s presented as a mousey, unimposing cluster of poor motor skills and pungent introversion. This is a head-fake.
Christian Grey is a hilariously caricatured 27 year old billionaire. He runs some sort of industrial corporation (James conveniently omits delving into what he actually does) and is an expert at several time-consuming hobbies, like rape. He plays piano, pilots helicopters, pilots gliders, reads newspapers (sounds exactly like every 27 year old billionaire I have heard of) and is well versed in classical music and classical literature. Where he found time to acquire all of these skills while ball-gagging and spanking his way through leggy blondes is hard to say, but we accept it. Oh, he’s also attractive enough that women everywhere immediately lose the ability to speak in his presence.
So yes, girl meets boy, girl falls in love, boy shows up, tells her he wants to spank her silly and poof, bondage. He accomplishes this by getting her drunk, forcing her into uncomfortable situations, not allowing her to say no, intimidating her with money, and raping her repeatedly in a dungeon. Wait, sorry, that’s the synopsis from all of the critical reviews.
What actually happens is a slow dance between Grey and Steele. Grey appears in control, Steele appears intimidated and outgunned. Grey’s experience, his beauty, and his mystique are intoxicating to her. It appears that Grey is able to have her any ways he wants her. Yet, this isn’t the case. James introduces a subtlety to Grey early in the book that lurks beneath the sheets, and acts as a guidepost to what is going on throughout the relationship: hunger.
Grey has a problem with food. He incessantly demands that Ana eat, he privately funds food aid to Sudan, his company owns farmland, and he is granting money to the university to develop higher yielding crops. James also quickly ties hunger to sexual desire. Ana and Grey both use hunger as innuendo throughout the work, but it starts as Ana’s inner monologue sniffs out what Grey means when he says he is hungry. Here, James sets up a critical power struggle in the book; a power struggle that is crucial to understand the relationship and undermine the culture warriors who have missed everything.
Somewhere after halfway through the book, we learn a lot about Grey. Importantly, we learn that his entire sex life has been in the context of dominant/submissive, he has never had a “vanilla” sexual relationship or encounter. We learn that he was adopted at 4 years old. We learn that his sexual experiences started when he was 15 by a middle aged woman. We learn that he was the submissive. We learn that he does not sleep with anyone, his partners must use separate beds. We learn that Grey is used to getting exactly what he wants sexually. We learn that Grey is not looking for love. We also learn that Grey hates being touched. Most importantly (for now) we learn that Grey was starving as a child and that he remembers it. Hunger motivates Grey; food is sacred.
When James shackles hunger to sex, she is signaling to the reader the vast power Steele has over Grey. Grey is invulnerable, except for food. He will not be starved. He would not be sexually starved either, until Ana had the ability to render him a helpless infant simply by saying, “no.” This power Ana wields is the crux of the entire book, and I can’t stress how critical it is to understanding the conflict. Driven by his appetite, Grey engages on a series of personal deflowerings with Steele. He sleeps with her, literally sleeps. He has sex with her outside the context of BDSM. He shares his bed with her. He introduces her to his family, he is photographed with her in public. The list goes on, but it’s important to realize that Grey doesn’t have to give in to anyone… except Steele.
Once these pieces fall together, you start to look at nearly every interaction between Grey and Steele and you realize that James has all of them with Grey facially holding power, but Steele ultimately winning the encounter. Even after Grey spanks Ana for the first time, Ana ends up winning the encounter and Grey sleeps in her bed sans-coitus. Grey should be wielding power in the majority of encounters, but Steele holds all the cards.
This book is about power. Steele has all of it, Grey merely has the appearance of it. Ultimately, Steele exercises this power by dumping Grey and returning all of the expensive things he has given her.
James’s execution of these power shifts is expertly done. It’s entirely possible that I’m manufacturing all of this, but it’s not that subtle. In fact, it comes close to being heavy handed, but I think it is right where it needs to be given the technical weakness of James’s writing. This brings me to the critics.
No fair reading of this book supports the frothing warcry of our spiritual guardians. Rape is non-existent and the manufactured power-imbalance between Grey and Steele is at best overstated; I suggest it’s absolutely the opposite. Steele isn’t pressured into anything. Grey doesn’t get her drunk and take advantage of her. Grey’s stalking is pretty mild, given what he would actually be capable of.
Social Commentary:
I mentioned earlier that I know why the critics are wrong. Disclaimer: I am not a person who readily accepts or recognizes a patriarchal perspective; in this case, I make an exception. The bloviating horde only comes to their conclusions about this work through a decidedly male outlook on sexuality and media consumption. I’m going to risk some wrath and speak briefly about what drives men and women sexually, and why the warnings about this book (lovingly monikered: mommy-porn) are agonizingly wrong.
Newsflash: men and women are aroused by different things and consume sex in different ways and for different reasons. I’m generalizing here, but men are rather visual and visceral sexual creatures. Women, on the other hand, are not. Women are driven by something deeper, more interpersonal. I would suggest that women are sexually motivated by power, which sounds a little more industrial than I mean. It’s more about the connection and mutual vulnerability that comes with sex; it strips the pretenses of power and control from both partners and leaves them at mutual mercy.
In light of this, and getting personal, I was aroused zero times while reading this book. There’s plenty of descriptive exposition, pulled off with all the skill of a fourteen year old writing naughty stories. In the middle of the “hot” scenes, James sprinkles us with sexy lines like, “suck me, baby.” It is all rather off-putting, and I have a hard time buying that women are turned on by the erotica. I buy whole-heartedly, however, that women are turned on by the control that those encounters bring to Ana; that Ana is able to break the veneer of Christian Grey and meet him where he’s vulnerable.
I do not mean this in any degrading way to women; this is not a slight, and I am not suggesting that women get off on having control. I am suggesting that the sexiest parts of this book, and why I think it is so popular despite all of its weakness, are when Ana strips the layers of power that James has lacquered on to Grey and we see him just as feeble and confused as Ana is supposed to be.
In doing this, I think James has snuck one other thing into this work: a commentary on modern, western sexuality. Grey is a caricature of male sexuality: he has money, power, beauty, some damn long fingers, and an unearned air of “experience.” Ana, meanwhile, is the consummate virgin: inexperienced and uncharted like a newly discovered sea-cave. Grey is an expert spelunker. Except he isn’t.
None of Grey’s experience or sexual knowledge matters with Ana because their relationship is something grounded, something real. His list of “first times” with Ana grows by the page and he breaks all of his rules, plans, and structure constantly. His world is shattered by her.
Sure, Grey wants to bring Ana into his world, the sexual world that he knows, and Ana dips her toes in from time to time; ultimately, Grey’s view on sexuality is rejected time and again. Not because it’s not pleasurable, Ana certainly enjoys herself, but because she wants “more.” Grey finds out that he does too.
This is generalized western sexual maturation. Grey’s BDSM experience is representative of the sexualized messaging targeting teenage boys and young men. Our culture creates a world of object-women in rather fantastic bikinis to bring us exceptionally cold beer. Pornography fictionalizes sex to serve this target audience, creating the image of a male-centric, highly visual encounter. This IS Christian Grey.
Boys need some Anastasia Steele to become men. Our culture has developed a flawed sexual perspective and sold it to young males. The only thing that can shatter that image is a partner who strips it all away and renders us vulnerable. Someone who shows us that all of our sexual certainty is worthless, and helps us find the “more.” Someone who can starve us, bring us back to a time when we could still learn.
This is why the critics are wrong. In all of their assessments of this book, they are taking a highly visual, facial, male-oriented consumption, if they bother to actually consume it at all. Women aren’t visual, not like men. I’m sure some of the erotica (as bad as it is) is appealing to plenty of people out there, but I argue that the exchange of power and vulnerability is what keeps people, specifically women, coming to this story.
I don’t know if the commentary or the lurking themes will play out on screen. I don’t know if James is a genius or an idiot savant. What I do know is that the culture warrior’s arguments are actually made by the book, and they only look foolish in denouncing it so vocally and so ignorantly. Massively popular media brings a great opportunity for conversation and education. Shutting down art has never brought an opportunity for conversation or education.
50 Shades of Grey is an American phenomenon. The book has sold over 100 million copies and the Movie grossed over $90 million in its opening 4-day weekend. It has sparked intrigue, a hilarious barrage of jokes, and no small amount of controversy among culture warriors. And, until those culture warriors opened their collectively incorrect mouths, I couldn’t have cared less about this story.
Unfortunately, we live in an age of micro-crusades; people draw relevance from sycophantic throngs hanging on every dire warning, and of course reposting them in a viral orgy of likes and up-votes and ping-backs. Today, truth doesn’t matter, literacy doesn’t matter, assessment doesn’t matter. Only confirmation matters. From confirmation bias that occludes exploration and discussion, to narcissistic confirmation that our criticisms are valid and thus we are valid. We draw value in the spittle-speckled fury of the mob.
Listening to this mob will tell you everything you need to know about 50 Shades of Grey. The story glorifies the BDSM lifestyle, Intimate Partner Violence, stalking, abusive relationships, alcohol abuse, male-dominance, and rape. This story puts consumers at risk because they will try all of these things, especially rape; it is the job of the mob to let us know that rape is dangerous. Don’t read this book, don’t watch this movie, or you will rape and be raped.
Okay, sorry for the melodrama, but this is what brought me to this book. There’s a concept in tort law called res ipsa loquitur, which is Latin for: “the thing itself speaks.” This concept, very basically, is that an outlying event itself is sufficient to show that something must have caused it; this was my question, “If 50 Shades is so bad and so poisonous, how is it so wildly successful?” In reading articles and blog posts about the danger (even from psychiatrists! So much authority!) it became apparent that no one was telling the truth, and I began to suspect that approximately zero of them had taken the time to read the piece. I knew they hadn’t seen the movie (it wasn’t out) but I figured someone would bother to verify that what was said had any basis in the book at all. I don’t think so.
So, I apologize for the lofty introduction, but what follows is my literary analysis of 50 Shades of Grey. I am not applying any specific critical theory, because I’m trying to find out what the story is saying, not what I can make it say under a given lens. What I did, however, was approach the story as objectively as possible and find the thrust of the story as well as I could. With that, it begins.
Technical critique:
Okay, everyone has heard that the writing is terrible. Frankly, it is. The book is fraught with syntax errors, usage problems, and abysmal grammar. The jokes about the quality of the prose are warranted, so I won’t spend a lot of time on it.
James is not an expert writer; this is obvious. She tells me everything, she shows me almost nothing. Visuals in the book are punctuated with overt explanations for how I should feel (through the lens of Ana, as a first person narrator) or how I see things, or how others are doing things. When someone isn’t walking “with purpose” or saying something “gravely,” the events are punctuated by Ana’s inner monologue, most commonly with “Crap!” I’m left to interpret nothing and James doesn’t work very hard to make me feel anything, she just instructs me on what to feel; this falls woefully flat.
All of that said, however, is not sufficient to discount the value of a work. Frankly, with editing and revision, this goes away. I have no idea, but I’m willing to wager the publisher wasn’t banking on the sales from this book; spending the resources on a novice writer to polish off some erotica is probably not worth it.
Storytelling:
James fails at prose, but her storytelling chops are more than capable. I dare say, some of her techniques in crafting the story are either the work of a genius, or the luckiest idiot on earth; maybe both.
This is where the analysis is going to hang out for a while. I will try and take you through my experience reading the book as it happened and as I started to realize where the value was.
Starting the book I was immediately in pain. Like an innocent Anastasia Steele I was unprepared for the spanking waiting for me with each page turn. The writing is hollow, the dialogue is stunted, the internal monologue is maddening. Yet, by the end of the very brief virgin chapter, my curiosity was piqued. Ana’s monologue was annoying, but it placed me squarely in the innocence of youth. It appealed to me in a similar way that early Taylor Swift songs (don’t judge!) did; that is, it brought me to a place where attraction was a crush and mystery was novel. I remembered the knee-fluttering, stomach-churning feelings of immature relationships.
James set up the story to take us back before the baggage of relationships and the maturity that we build. Ana is free of the knowledge of successful relationships, or the cynicism of failed ones. She fumbles through with all the skill we could expect from a virgin author but, true to form, she gets it done… messily.
I could see the draw of the book. Reading is an escape, this escape was easy.
However, as I plodded along, I began to notice that James had snuck some core themes into this book; themes other than rape, which is decidedly absent. Looking closer, these were deep and subtle themes, gently massaging and teasing my inner reader. About halfway through the text I was thoroughly convinced that every critique I had read missed the bus entirely, and I knew why, but more on that later.
To understand why the critiques are wrong, I have to do some brief character descriptions on Grey and Steele. You have to know what’s really driving them and why their relationship is so important. Not because it’s the main plot, but because it’s where James’s skill actually comes into play.
Anastasia Steele is the protagonist. She is an impossibly innocent 21 year old senior in college who has managed to live life to this point without a computer, smartphone, or e-mail address. She is also a virgin to the point of never having been kissed or in any sort of relationship to speak of… ever. All the while she is strikingly beautiful, but in the “unexpected” trope of She’s All That. She’s presented as a mousey, unimposing cluster of poor motor skills and pungent introversion. This is a head-fake.
Christian Grey is a hilariously caricatured 27 year old billionaire. He runs some sort of industrial corporation (James conveniently omits delving into what he actually does) and is an expert at several time-consuming hobbies, like rape. He plays piano, pilots helicopters, pilots gliders, reads newspapers (sounds exactly like every 27 year old billionaire I have heard of) and is well versed in classical music and classical literature. Where he found time to acquire all of these skills while ball-gagging and spanking his way through leggy blondes is hard to say, but we accept it. Oh, he’s also attractive enough that women everywhere immediately lose the ability to speak in his presence.
So yes, girl meets boy, girl falls in love, boy shows up, tells her he wants to spank her silly and poof, bondage. He accomplishes this by getting her drunk, forcing her into uncomfortable situations, not allowing her to say no, intimidating her with money, and raping her repeatedly in a dungeon. Wait, sorry, that’s the synopsis from all of the critical reviews.
What actually happens is a slow dance between Grey and Steele. Grey appears in control, Steele appears intimidated and outgunned. Grey’s experience, his beauty, and his mystique are intoxicating to her. It appears that Grey is able to have her any ways he wants her. Yet, this isn’t the case. James introduces a subtlety to Grey early in the book that lurks beneath the sheets, and acts as a guidepost to what is going on throughout the relationship: hunger.
Grey has a problem with food. He incessantly demands that Ana eat, he privately funds food aid to Sudan, his company owns farmland, and he is granting money to the university to develop higher yielding crops. James also quickly ties hunger to sexual desire. Ana and Grey both use hunger as innuendo throughout the work, but it starts as Ana’s inner monologue sniffs out what Grey means when he says he is hungry. Here, James sets up a critical power struggle in the book; a power struggle that is crucial to understand the relationship and undermine the culture warriors who have missed everything.
Somewhere after halfway through the book, we learn a lot about Grey. Importantly, we learn that his entire sex life has been in the context of dominant/submissive, he has never had a “vanilla” sexual relationship or encounter. We learn that he was adopted at 4 years old. We learn that his sexual experiences started when he was 15 by a middle aged woman. We learn that he was the submissive. We learn that he does not sleep with anyone, his partners must use separate beds. We learn that Grey is used to getting exactly what he wants sexually. We learn that Grey is not looking for love. We also learn that Grey hates being touched. Most importantly (for now) we learn that Grey was starving as a child and that he remembers it. Hunger motivates Grey; food is sacred.
When James shackles hunger to sex, she is signaling to the reader the vast power Steele has over Grey. Grey is invulnerable, except for food. He will not be starved. He would not be sexually starved either, until Ana had the ability to render him a helpless infant simply by saying, “no.” This power Ana wields is the crux of the entire book, and I can’t stress how critical it is to understanding the conflict. Driven by his appetite, Grey engages on a series of personal deflowerings with Steele. He sleeps with her, literally sleeps. He has sex with her outside the context of BDSM. He shares his bed with her. He introduces her to his family, he is photographed with her in public. The list goes on, but it’s important to realize that Grey doesn’t have to give in to anyone… except Steele.
Once these pieces fall together, you start to look at nearly every interaction between Grey and Steele and you realize that James has all of them with Grey facially holding power, but Steele ultimately winning the encounter. Even after Grey spanks Ana for the first time, Ana ends up winning the encounter and Grey sleeps in her bed sans-coitus. Grey should be wielding power in the majority of encounters, but Steele holds all the cards.
This book is about power. Steele has all of it, Grey merely has the appearance of it. Ultimately, Steele exercises this power by dumping Grey and returning all of the expensive things he has given her.
James’s execution of these power shifts is expertly done. It’s entirely possible that I’m manufacturing all of this, but it’s not that subtle. In fact, it comes close to being heavy handed, but I think it is right where it needs to be given the technical weakness of James’s writing. This brings me to the critics.
No fair reading of this book supports the frothing warcry of our spiritual guardians. Rape is non-existent and the manufactured power-imbalance between Grey and Steele is at best overstated; I suggest it’s absolutely the opposite. Steele isn’t pressured into anything. Grey doesn’t get her drunk and take advantage of her. Grey’s stalking is pretty mild, given what he would actually be capable of.
Social Commentary:
I mentioned earlier that I know why the critics are wrong. Disclaimer: I am not a person who readily accepts or recognizes a patriarchal perspective; in this case, I make an exception. The bloviating horde only comes to their conclusions about this work through a decidedly male outlook on sexuality and media consumption. I’m going to risk some wrath and speak briefly about what drives men and women sexually, and why the warnings about this book (lovingly monikered: mommy-porn) are agonizingly wrong.
Newsflash: men and women are aroused by different things and consume sex in different ways and for different reasons. I’m generalizing here, but men are rather visual and visceral sexual creatures. Women, on the other hand, are not. Women are driven by something deeper, more interpersonal. I would suggest that women are sexually motivated by power, which sounds a little more industrial than I mean. It’s more about the connection and mutual vulnerability that comes with sex; it strips the pretenses of power and control from both partners and leaves them at mutual mercy.
In light of this, and getting personal, I was aroused zero times while reading this book. There’s plenty of descriptive exposition, pulled off with all the skill of a fourteen year old writing naughty stories. In the middle of the “hot” scenes, James sprinkles us with sexy lines like, “suck me, baby.” It is all rather off-putting, and I have a hard time buying that women are turned on by the erotica. I buy whole-heartedly, however, that women are turned on by the control that those encounters bring to Ana; that Ana is able to break the veneer of Christian Grey and meet him where he’s vulnerable.
I do not mean this in any degrading way to women; this is not a slight, and I am not suggesting that women get off on having control. I am suggesting that the sexiest parts of this book, and why I think it is so popular despite all of its weakness, are when Ana strips the layers of power that James has lacquered on to Grey and we see him just as feeble and confused as Ana is supposed to be.
In doing this, I think James has snuck one other thing into this work: a commentary on modern, western sexuality. Grey is a caricature of male sexuality: he has money, power, beauty, some damn long fingers, and an unearned air of “experience.” Ana, meanwhile, is the consummate virgin: inexperienced and uncharted like a newly discovered sea-cave. Grey is an expert spelunker. Except he isn’t.
None of Grey’s experience or sexual knowledge matters with Ana because their relationship is something grounded, something real. His list of “first times” with Ana grows by the page and he breaks all of his rules, plans, and structure constantly. His world is shattered by her.
Sure, Grey wants to bring Ana into his world, the sexual world that he knows, and Ana dips her toes in from time to time; ultimately, Grey’s view on sexuality is rejected time and again. Not because it’s not pleasurable, Ana certainly enjoys herself, but because she wants “more.” Grey finds out that he does too.
This is generalized western sexual maturation. Grey’s BDSM experience is representative of the sexualized messaging targeting teenage boys and young men. Our culture creates a world of object-women in rather fantastic bikinis to bring us exceptionally cold beer. Pornography fictionalizes sex to serve this target audience, creating the image of a male-centric, highly visual encounter. This IS Christian Grey.
Boys need some Anastasia Steele to become men. Our culture has developed a flawed sexual perspective and sold it to young males. The only thing that can shatter that image is a partner who strips it all away and renders us vulnerable. Someone who shows us that all of our sexual certainty is worthless, and helps us find the “more.” Someone who can starve us, bring us back to a time when we could still learn.
This is why the critics are wrong. In all of their assessments of this book, they are taking a highly visual, facial, male-oriented consumption, if they bother to actually consume it at all. Women aren’t visual, not like men. I’m sure some of the erotica (as bad as it is) is appealing to plenty of people out there, but I argue that the exchange of power and vulnerability is what keeps people, specifically women, coming to this story.
I don’t know if the commentary or the lurking themes will play out on screen. I don’t know if James is a genius or an idiot savant. What I do know is that the culture warrior’s arguments are actually made by the book, and they only look foolish in denouncing it so vocally and so ignorantly. Massively popular media brings a great opportunity for conversation and education. Shutting down art has never brought an opportunity for conversation or education.
He has some good stuff on his Facebook that you may want to use.
This is pretty basic Protestant stuff until you get the to the last paragraph:
Link he mentioned in post
Here are his faith based essays he has written on FB:
There’s an ongoing struggle in our world between two indomitable and un-falsifiable foes. The argument is either relatively new or relatively old (depending on which side you fall). Simplified, the argument is pitched as evolutionism vs. creationism. Really, though, that doesn’t encompass the true question or adequately detail the major factions; the real question is old earth vs. young earth.
Evolution vs. creation is too broad-brush. Many creationists believe in a divinely manifested evolution; finding God as creator doesn’t preclude the tools he may have used to develop his creation. So, if the rift isn’t believers vs. non-believers it must lie somewhere else. On the surface, many would say the rift is between biblical literalists, and everyone else. I think this is incomplete (as I will illustrate) but it’s a good distinction to start from because many of us have had a discussion where someone views the creation story of the bible as a positive, literal assertion of history.
I can jive with this viewpoint. I run into trouble because I have a basic disagreement, not with the literal truth of the biblical record, but with the problems associated with assumptions made by young-earth creationists and with the functional problems of ancient-author understandings of the universe we know exists. I think the Genesis account of creation is true, but I would imagine (and have personally experienced) that my reading of Genesis varies greatly from many young-earth creationists out there. I think Genesis, first and foremost, is not intended as a science lesson. It establishes God as creator, man as caretaker, man in the image of God, and it establishes man as flawed.
Young-earthers assert that the earth is approximately 10,000-15,000 years old, based on the biblical genealogy record. Again, as I will demonstrate, I’m ok with this estimation of the earth’s age, but not in any conventional sense or the sense shared by Young-earthers.
This is where my analysis gets a little heady, and probably overly wordy. I think that both old and young earth theories are concurrently true. I know, this seems weird, but follow me. We’ll start with some basic premises I need you to accept; I don’t think they’re much of a stretch (unless you are an atheist). I am operating under the premise that God created the universe; this necessarily means that God existed before and thus exists outside of our universe. I also need you to understand that time, as we understand it and as I discuss it, is a physical dimension of our universe.
Modern physics tells us that time is a physical dimension, much like the traditional X, Y, Z axes that we all hated in geometry. The key difference between temporal [time] dimensions and the spatial dimensions is our method for navigating them. We navigate time on an increasing axis and have not been able to travel in the opposite direction, yet. In the spatial dimensions we are free to traverse both positively and negatively (though, one could argue that this is not true if we look past relativistic physics, that’s a separate discussion). Many assume that this means we experience time on a fixed vector, but this isn’t true. The passage of time (both perceived and real) is subjective to our state of mind [perceived] and the speed we are travelling [real]. Relativity postulates and experiments have shown that objects moving at a higher velocity literally move through time at a slower rate.
Math is not hindered as we are in its time-travelling abilities and physicists use math to “travel back in time” with relative frequency. With math, and its ability to move forward or backward through time, we are able to travel along all dimensions both forward and backwards. I am spending a lot of time on this because it’s important to understand that our perception of time is limited to forward, but time itself is not limited to forward.
This temporal freedom tells us that time, both “past” and “future” (or positive and negative) exists already. We know that “now” is relative to your motion, so this instant isn’t the only instant that exists, but the totality of instants must exist for time to play out the way it does. Time exists inside our universe, not outside. This is important because it means that God is not affected by time; God created time at the same moment he created space.
I know this is getting really cerebral but you must understand this concept because time is exactly like space. If time is exactly like space, then the idea that time “started” at zero is false. There isn’t a “start” to space; there isn’t a start to time. Maybe that’s too simplistic, there isn’t a “linear” start to space that then progresses to an end of space; there is a starting point (as indefinable as a single point in the universe can be) but there is no ending point. Time is identical in that time must have started somewhere, but the start is irrespective of its existence.
Basically, when God created space, he created all of it; it follows that he must also have created all of time. We have labeled “the beginning of time” relative to our current position and our experience of time in only a positive direction. That, however, is like saying one end of a road is the beginning and the other is the end: this can only be true if you travel in one direction, but on a two way road, those points can be reversed. Further, we have no idea where the builders actually started when they made the road; they may have started in the middle.
This is where the phasic-timetable comes through. Since God created the totality of time in the same instant, his entry point into creation is irrelevant to the passage of time. God’s creation point has absolutely nothing to do with year zero. It’s like saying a baker made a loaf of bread starting from one end.
Since God’s entry into the timeline is irrelevant, there’s nothing precluding both a biblical timetable (including a literal six-day creation) and our current conceptions of an old-earth/old-universe existing concurrently. Both are possible simultaneously. When you want to get really heady, consider the physical possibility that the actual date of the creation is in the future.
Today, God punched me in the face…in the good way.
I don’t know you, but there are times when I will struggle to resolve something; some image, some conflict, or some question for a really long time to no end. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t spend every waking minute pondering some cosmic mystery, but in quiet times my mind will wander back to the subject. Occasionally, something will pop the lock on that struggle, and the image will slam itself into my brain; I gain new perspective.
For years I have struggled with the trinity, that God is simultaneously three beings and one being. They are all distinct, and also distinctly God; it’s a strange concept. Let me clarify, however, that I haven’t struggled with God being the trinity, but there are inherent problems with wrapping your mind around an unfathomable being. I was having trouble with the image, with the reality of what it meant. Today in church, God popped the lock on this image, and I see things in a new way.
Quick background: I shop at Office Max sometimes, we started a book study on Crazy Love at church, and the sermon today involved Jesus being the Word of God (or the Greek word Logos, as used by John). You now have everything you need to follow my story.
The other day, at Office Max, Kayla and I were looking at printers. I was tempted by a printer which had a 3D scanner; this amazing device can take a real object and then print a 2D copy of it, amazing! Yeah, not when I realized that we’ve had cameras that produce 2D pictures and video for over a century, not so impressive after that realization. Anyhow, the concept is pretty interesting when we think about imaging, and it ties into the trinity in a weird way. Genesis tells us that we are made in the very image of God; we are of God, we resemble God, we can relate to God because of how we were made. We are not God; we can relate, but we cannot comprehend. We can do amazing things, but it pales in scope and comparison to the raw creative power that is God. We are a photocopy, a facsimile of God; it’s like God took a 3D scanner and made a print-off of himself (or a couple billion print-offs, however you want to look at it).
The first chapter of Crazy Love talks about how big God really is. This being created time! Our universe burst into existence at a mere word! God is pretty big, and the book reminds us how big he is, and how small we sometimes make him. The book asked us to ponder, to try to imagine just how big a God like that is, and to remember when we approach God in prayer, just whom we are addressing; it changed my perspective.
Finally, in church today, our pastor talked about Jesus being the Word of God. The Greek term is Logos, and I don’t think “word” does it justice. According to Wikipedia: “In ordinary, non-technical Greek, logos had a semantic field extending beyond "word " to notions such as, on the one hand, language, talk, statement, speech, conversation, tale, story, prose, proposition, and principle; and on the other hand, thought, reason, account, consideration, esteem, due relation, proportion, and analogy.”
I read this as “a full communication.” Jesus is the embodiment of God’s communication to us; John calls him the Word of God, but “Word” represents so much more than mere speech, language. It is the full transmission of Godliness to Man. God sent us Jesus to show us what God is: His every action, word, movement, and even image shows us the character and characteristics of God.
All three of these concepts converged on me in church today and I got a glimpse of what the trinity means. God is so big that he needs three full beings to encompass what he is. I have an image that springs to mind to illustrate this: I’m sure you’ve seen a triangle chart, or something similar. It’s a way to demonstrate the interaction of three characteristics that are all co-dependent. If you label the three points as: up/down, left/right, and forward/back the triangle would represent the totality of movement. You can only move a certain, maximum speed, but you can alter the direction. For example, if you can move 10 MPH, and you move it all forward, you will be going 10MPH forward, if you split your movement to be 5MPH forward and 5MPH laterally (left/right) you would still be moving 10MPH, but not in just one direction; instead of being at one of the points, you’d be in the middle of one of the edges.
I think of God like this:
The Holy Spirit is the spiritual essence of God, the worship, the prayer, the emotion, the compassion, and the wrath. All that can be felt and divined belongs to the spirit. Jesus, as covered, is the Logos of God, everything that can be communicated or exchanged is embodied by him. God the father is the raw, creative intellect that designed a millennia-spanning nuclear fusion process of stars, and the biological processes that allow a single-cell to split itself into an exact copy to reproduce.
Humans are a single triangle. We can focus our energies in one direction, we can achieve Godliness in spirit, or in communication, or in creation. We can channel the very essence of God. We are imperfect, and I argue that our channeling is never fully pure, always short of hitting a point on the triangle. God is all three triangles; he is at once pure in three directions. He is literally split into three beings to achieve this impossible harmony. His fullness overflows the vessels he built to contain it. We are a 3D image scaled down into 2D.
I realize that even this isn’t a perfect image, but the bigness of this hit me today and I was actually wonderstruck at how God works. A being that can create a galaxy that takes light over a hundred thousand years to cross had to make for Himself three vessels to fill. He gifted us with a tiny portion of each vessel, three in one, that we may experience all aspects of him in our own lives. All of our expression (consciously or not) contains all three aspects of God.
I wish I could fully communicate the image, and its implications to you. I’m finding my words to feel all too human as they fall on the page; and I know it’s already a long read. Thank you for sharing this with me; I hope it pops a lock and opens some image for you.
Today is good.
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2023
That was the maid's job.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2024
He approves, so no need to "set to record straight."
As long as it's not HIS fault, it's fine.
The one good thing to come from them all blaming his children is the admission that the drugs exist, and are there. Absolute retards in his Locals were trying to pass it off as something else iirc.
After this is all over, Comicsgate might need some rebranding after all the amazing takes thrown around from them. I suggest a slogan -
"Fuck niggers and kids, literally." - COMICSGATE 2024
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datura_binge
kiwifarms.net
- Joined
- Aug 3, 2021
This right here is the biggest addict and cheater cope phrase to use that exists. They all say this. "HOW could I cheat when would I have time"? "How could I drink when would I have time?" Remember, this is coming from a guy who literally streams himself sitting in a chair drinking for hours at a stretch. That's the person talking about "not having time" to do XYZ. They're all the same. It's wild.
- Joined
- Feb 19, 2024
He's a gaslighting emotionally-manipulating prick.
I would make some wisecrack about how Nick's "no time" and "muh kids" are Bimmy Rolfe trademarks, but even James probably actually cares about his family.
Nick deserves a boot to the face.
- Joined
- Jun 10, 2018
There is ZERO helping an addict with a monstrous ego and above average intelligence. None. Short of death, imprisonment or a MAJOR life change like a true spiritual rebirth (very unlikely), he's now an addict for life.
For all the shit Aaron takes, earned to some degree due to his diarrhea of the mouth, he pretty much confirms Nick is like this in private. The rules don't apply to him, and even if they did he's "smart" enough to overcome them.