Short, will expand later.

Feeling peaceful. Thinking about the class which will start in about five minutes.

The whole vague solidarity idea can really get into your head. To have no shift, no dissonance between people... oddly, I think that clip of The Chatterly Affair speaks it as well as anything else.

Blather

One of today's discussion topics was the path thought takes when trying to help others. As written by someone whose name escapes me, people tend to go through steps -

Horror: "My God, I didn't realize it was so bad."

Determination: "Let's fix it."

Despair: "We can't fix it. Let's forget it."

Solidarity: "They" becomes "we", "those people" becomes "our people".

- and people in affluent countries often get stuck on #3.

But the thing that interests me, and continues to interest me, is how this can work on any level. Take a marriage that's on the rocks, for instance. At some point, one may realize things are in trouble. In many people, this leads to a frenzied determination to fix things, sometimes even if the realization comes to an outsider, like a friend or one of the kids. But when it doesn't seem to work, the temptation comes in to quit and ignore the situation. If one gets past the despair stage, one tends to find oneself more invested in the issue than one was originally.

The teacher asked us what resources we have to deal with despair in our ordinary lives. People listed friends and family, drugs and psychologists. Curiously, these fit fairly well with the perspectives we've been studying - friends and family being the religious side, drugs a bit like the absurd (Camus), and psychology like enlightenment rationality.

( And then I go off talking about me )

Tamara claimed that I will eventually corrupt her in every way. She got a Look.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the chocolate I got yesterday, because I didn't go online for having so much fun last night.

...that sounds like alcohol or drugs. Well, I never do chocolate by halves.

Except that's exactly what we did. Rachel and Tamara and I got into my box of Seven Deadly Sins Plus One truffles. I carefully cut small pieces off a few of the truffles and we each had a bit of Gluttony and Greed. (Naturally, we finished Gluttony off, and Tamara was begging for more Greed but I kept it to myself.) The girls were giggling SO. MUCH. And rolling around. And cuddling.

...hee. That was lots of fun.

Anyway, by the end of the night, we also tasted Envy, Lust and Wrath. I am totally taken with Wrath, it's one of the spiciest chocolates I've had. And I had a bit of Pride this morning. Delicious!

Pardon my French, but hell fucking yes!

...so I'm a bit fond of violent thought...