{"id":5121,"date":"2017-01-23T09:47:09","date_gmt":"2017-01-23T14:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5121"},"modified":"2017-03-30T02:15:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-30T06:15:04","slug":"on-shielding-audio-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5121","title":{"rendered":"On Shielding (Audio &#038; Text)"},"content":{"rendered":"<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-5121-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AFWTA-6On-Shielding.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AFWTA-6On-Shielding.mp3\">https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AFWTA-6On-Shielding.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>(<a href=\"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/AFWTA-6On-Shielding.mp3\">Direct Link to the Mp3<\/a>)<\/p>\n<p>On Friday, I needed to do a thread of a thing, so if you hate threads and you were waiting until I collected it, here it is.<\/p>\n<p>But this originally needed to be done <em>in situ<\/em>. It needed to be a serialized and systematized intervention and imposition into the machinery of that particular flow of time. That day\u2026<\/p>\n<p>There is a principle within many schools of magical thought known as &#8220;shielding.&#8221; In practice and theory, it&#8217;s closely related to the notion of &#8220;grounding&#8221; and the notion of &#8220;centering.&#8221; (If you need to think of magical praxis as merely a cipher for psychological manipulation toward particular behaviours or outcomes, these all still scan.)<\/p>\n<p>When you ground, when you centre, when you shield, you are anchoring yourself in an awareness of a) your present moment, your temporality; b) your Self and all emotions and thoughts; and c) your environment. You are using your awareness to carve out a space for you to safely inhabit while in the fullness\u00a0<em><strong>of<\/strong><\/em> that awareness. It&#8217;s a way to regroup, breathe, gather yourself, and know what and where you are, and to know what&#8217;s there\u00a0<em><strong>with<\/strong><\/em> you.<\/p>\n<p>You can shield your self, your home, your car, your group of friends, but moving parts do increase the complexity of what you&#8217;re trying to hold in mind, which may lead to anxiety or frustration, which kind of opposes the exercise&#8217;s point. (Another sympathetic notion, here, is that of &#8220;warding,&#8221; though that can be said to be more for objects,not people.)<\/p>\n<p>So what\u00a0<em><strong>is<\/strong><\/em> the point?<\/p>\n<p>The point is that many of us are being drained, today, this week, this month, this year, this life, and we need to remember to take the time to regroup and recharge. We need to shield ourselves, our spaces, and those we love, to ward them against those things that would sap us of strength and the will to fight. We know we are strong. We know that we are fierce, and capable. But we must not lash out wildly, meaninglessly. We mustn&#8217;t be lured into exhausting <em><strong>ourselves<\/strong><\/em>. We must <em><strong>collect<\/strong><\/em> ourselves, protect ourselves, replenish ourselves, and by &#8220;ourselves&#8221; I also obviously mean &#8220;each other.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Mutual support and endurance will be crucial.<\/p>\n<p>\u2026So imagine that you&#8217;ve built a web out of all the things you love, and all of the things you love are connected to each other and the strands between them vibrate when touched. And you touch them all, yes?<\/p>\n<p>And so you touch them all and they all touch you and the energy you generate is cyclically replenished, like ocean currents and gravity. And you use what you build\u2014that thrumming hum of energy\u2014to blanket and to protect and to energize that which creates it.<\/p>\n<p>And we&#8217;ll do this every day. We&#8217;ll do this like breathing. We&#8217;ll do this like the way our muscles and tendons and bones slide across and pull against and support each other. We&#8217;ll do this like heartbeats. Cyclical. Mutually supporting. The burden on all of us, together, so that it&#8217;s never on any one of us alone.<\/p>\n<p>So please take some time today, tomorrow,\u00a0<em><strong>very soon<\/strong><\/em> to build your shields. Because, soon, we&#8217;re going to need you to deploy them more and more.<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, and good luck.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>The audio and text above are modified versions of <a href=\"https:\/\/storify.com\/Wolven\/on-shielding\">this Twitter thread<\/a>. This isn&#8217;t the first time we&#8217;ve talked about the <a href=\"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5061\">overlap of politics, psychology, philosophy, and magic<\/a>, and if you think it&#8217;ll be the last, then you haven&#8217;t been paying attention.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, there isn&#8217;t much it feels like we can do, but we can support\u00a0 and shield each other. We have to remember that, in the days, weeks, month, and years to come. We should probably be doing our best to remember it forever.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, I hope this helps.<\/p>\n<p>Until Next Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(Direct Link to the Mp3) On Friday, I needed to do a thread of a thing, so if you hate threads and you were waiting until I collected it, here it is. But this originally needed to be done in situ. It needed to be a serialized and systematized intervention and imposition into the machinery [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[8,1156,497,498,944,560,646,1033,1154,1124,1155,769,872],"class_list":["post-5121","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-future-worth-thinking-about","tag-community","tag-magic","tag-magick","tag-my-voice","tag-my-words","tag-politics","tag-psychology","tag-shielding","tag-social-dynamics","tag-society","tag-sociology","tag-twitter"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5WByP-1kB","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5227,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5227","url_meta":{"origin":5121,"position":0},"title":"Appearance on the You Are Not So Smart Podcast","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"December 4, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"A few weeks ago I had a conversation with David McRaney of the You Are Not So Smart podcast, for his episode on Machine Bias. As he says on the blog: Now that algorithms are everywhere, helping us to both run and make sense of the world, a strange question\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4995,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=4995","url_meta":{"origin":5121,"position":1},"title":"Audio: &#8220;Presentations of Non-Human Consciousness in Speculative Fiction Media&#8221;","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"February 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com\/patreon.posts\/13646584285783886695.mp3 (Direct Link to the Mp3) Last week I gave a talk at the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association's 2016 conference in Albuquerque.\u00a0Take a listen and see what you think. It was part of the panel on 'Consciousness, the Self, and Epistemology,' and notes on my comrade presenters can\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5204,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5204","url_meta":{"origin":5121,"position":2},"title":"Audio &#038; Presentation: A Discussion on Daoism and Machine Consciousness","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"October 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com\/patreon-posts\/13067997299595990810.mp3 [Direct link to Mp3] My second talk for the SRI International Technology and Consciousness Workshop Series was about how nonwestern philosophies like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Daoism can help mitigate various kinds of bias in machine minds and increase compassion by allowing programmers and designers to think from within a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"A Future Worth Thinking About\"","block_context":{"text":"A Future Worth Thinking About","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=a-future-worth-thinking-about"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Yin-YangRing2-268x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5316,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5316","url_meta":{"origin":5121,"position":3},"title":"My Appearance on The Machine Ethics Podcast&#8217;s A.I. Retreat Episode","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"October 23, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"As you already know, we went to the second Juvet A.I. Retreat, back in September. If you want to hear several of us talk about what we got up to at the then you're in luck because here are several conversations conducted by Ben Byford of the Machine Ethics Podcast.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"algorithmic bias\"","block_context":{"text":"algorithmic bias","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=algorithmic-bias"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/ownE2zxTN2U\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5162,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5162","url_meta":{"origin":5121,"position":4},"title":"Audio and Outline of My Guest Lecture, &#8220;Technology, Disability, &#038; Human Augmentation&#8221;","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"April 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"https:\/\/s3-us-west-1.amazonaws.com\/patreon-posts\/7224113132387652353.mp3 [Direct link to Mp3] [09\/22\/17: This post has been updated with a transcript, courtesy of Open Transcripts] Back on March 13th, 2017, I gave an invited guest lecture, titled: TECHNOLOGY, DISABILITY, AND HUMAN AUGMENTATION 'Please join Dr. Ariel Eisenberg\u2019s seminar, \"American Identities: Disability,\" and [the] Interdisciplinary Studies Department for\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ableism\"","block_context":{"text":"ableism","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?tag=ableism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5988,"url":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?p=5988","url_meta":{"origin":5121,"position":5},"title":"From Norma to Normalization","author":"Damien P. Williams","date":"July 1, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"In this, the first installment of me talking to myself while pretending to talk with you, we talk about the idea, concept, process, and practical effects of normalization. What is normalization, and what does it mean? We talk about Foucault's understanding of norms as a means of social control, as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Patreon Archive&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Patreon Archive","link":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/?cat=1550"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5121","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5121"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5121\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5145,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5121\/revisions\/5145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5121"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5121"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/afutureworththinkingabout.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5121"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}