What I think is really interesting about the papyrus account of the workers building the tomb of Rameses III going on strike to demand better wages is really fascinating to me because if you look at the description given by the royal scribe you see that there was an attempt to satisfy the workers by bringing a large amount of food at once but that was rebuffed by the workers who declared that it wasn’t just that they were hungry at the moment but had serious charges to bring that “something bad had been done in this place of Pharoah” (is poor wages and mistreatment). They understood themselves as having long term economic interests as a -class- and organized together knowing that by doing so they could put forward their demands collectively. It so strongly flies in the face of narratives that are like “in this Time and Place people were happy to be serve because they believed in the God-King and maybe you get some intellectual outliers but certainly no common person questioned that”. If historical sources might paint that sorta picture of cultural homogeneity it is because those sources sought not to describe something true but invent a myth for the stability of a regime.
Since this is getting notes here’s a link to a translation of the papyrus scroll and here’s an article that gets further into the economic situation surrounding the strike and giving an explanation of the events. The workers didnt just refuse to construct Rameses III’s future tomb, they actually occupied the Valley of the Kings and were preventing anyone from entering to perform rituals or funerals. Basically they set up the first ever recorded picket line
Again the workers went on strike, this time taking over and blocking all access to the Valley of the Kings. The significance of this act was that no priests or family members of the deceased were able to enter with food and drink offerings for the dead and this was considered a serious offense to the memory of those who had passed on to the afterlife. When officials appeared with armed guards and threatened to remove the men by force, a striker responded that he would damage the royal tombs before they could move against him and so the two sides were stalemated.
Eventually the tomb workers were able to win the day and acquire their demands and actually set a precedent for organized labor and strikes in Egyptian society that continued for a long time
The jubilee in 1156 BCE was a great success and, as at all festivals, the participants forgot about their daily troubles with dancing and drink. The problem did not go away, however, and the workers continued their strikes and their struggle for fair payment in the following months. At last some sort of resolution seems to have been reached whereby officials were able to make payments to the workers on time but the dynamic of the relationship between temple officials and workers had changed – as had the practical application of the concept of ma’at – and these would never really revert to their former understandings again. Ma’at was the responsibility of the pharaoh to oversee and maintain, not the workers; and yet the men of Deir el-Medina had taken it upon themselves to correct what they saw as a breach in the policies which helped to maintain essential harmony and balance. The common people had been forced to assume the responsibilities of the king.
[…]
The success of the tomb-worker/artisan strikes inspired others to do the same. Just as the official records of the battle with the Sea Peoples never recorded the Egyptian losses in the land battle, neither do they record any mention of the strikes. The record of the strike comes from a papyrus scroll discovered at Deir el-Medina and most probably written by the scribe Amennakht. The precedent of workers walking away from their jobs was set by these events and, although there are no extant official reports of other similar events, workers now understood they had more power than previously thought. Strikes are mentioned in the latter part of the New Kingdom and Late Period and there is no doubt the practice began with the workers at Deir el-Medina in the time of Ramesses III.
There was also a strike at one point where construction workers refused to continue until they were given sufficient “cosmetics.”
This was thought a highly strange thing until somebody deciphered the recipe for the “cosmetics” the workers were demanding and recreated it.
It was sunscreen. Sunscreen.
Making that the first recorded strike over occupational safety.
Taken from Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson, Psy.D. A summary of the tips the book hands you on how to recognize emotionally healthy people.
They’re realistic and reliable
They work with reality rather than fighting it. They see problems and try to fix them, instead of overreacting with a fixation on how things should be.
They can feel and think at the same time. The ability to think even when upset makes an emotionally mature person someone you can reason with. They don’t lose their ability to see another perspective just because they aren’t getting what they want.
Their consistency makes them reliable. Because they have an integrated sense of self, they usually won’t surprise you with unexpected inconsistencies.
They don’t take everything personally. They can laugh at themselves and their foibles. They’re realistic enough to not feel unloved just because you made a mistake.
They’re respectful and reciprocal
They respect your boundaries. They’re looking for connection and closeness, not intrusion, control or enmeshment. They respect your individuality and that others have the final say on what their motivations are. They may tell you how they feel about what you did, but they don’t pretend to know you better than you know yourself.
They give back. They don’t like taking advantage of people, nor do they like the feeling of being used.
They are flexible and compromise well. Because collaborative, mature people don’t have an agenda to win at all costs, you won’t feel like you’re being taken advantage of. Compromise doesn’t mean mutual sacrifice; it means a mutual balancing of desires. They care about how you feel and don’t want to leave you feeling unsatisfied.
They’re even-tempered. They don’t sulk or pout for long periods of time or make you walk on eggshells.
When angered, they will usually tell you what’s wrong and ask you to do things differently. They’re willing to take the initiative to bring conflict to a close.
They are willing to be influenced. They don’t feel threatened when other people see things differently, nor are they afraid of seeming weak if they don’t know something. They may not agree, but they’ll try to understand your point of view.
They’re truthful. They understand why you’re upset if they lie or give you a false impression.
They apologize and make amends. They want to be responsible for their own behavior and are willing to apologize when needed.
They’re responsive
Their empathy makes you feel safe. Along with self-awareness, empathy is the soul of emotional intelligence.
They make you feel seen and understood. Their behavior reflects their desire to really get to know you, rather than looking for you to mirror them. They aren’t afraid of your emotions and don’t tell you that you should be feeling some other way.
They like to comfort and be comforted. They are sympathetic and know how crucial friendly support can be.
They reflect on their actions and try to change. They clearly understand how people affect each other emotionally. They take you seriously if you tell them about a behavior of theirs that makes you uncomfortable. They’ll remain aware of the issue and demonstrate follow-through in their attempts to change.
They can laugh and be playful. Laughter is a form of egalitarian play between people and reflects an ability to relinquish control and follow someone else’s lead.
They’re enjoyable to be around. They aren’t always happy, but for the most part they seem able to generate their own good feelings and enjoy life.
I think the best piece of character design advice I ever received was actually from a band leadership camp I attended in june of 2017.
the speaker there gave lots of advice for leaders—obviously, it was a leadership camp—but his saying about personality flaws struck me as useful for writers too.
he said to us all “your curses are your blessings and your blessings are your curses” and went on to explain how because he was such a great speaker, it made him a terrible listener. he could give speeches for hours on end and inspire thousands of people, but as soon as someone wanted to talk to him one on one or vent to him, he struggled with it.
he had us write down our greatest weakness and relate it to our biggest strength (mine being that I am far too emotional, but I’m gentle with others because I can understand their emotions), and the whole time people are sharing theirs, my mind was running wild with all my characters and their flaws.
previously, I had added flaws as an after thought, as in “this character seems too perfect. how can I make them not-like-that?” but that’s not how people or personalities work. for every human alive, their flaws and their strengths are directly related to each other. you can’t have one without the other.
is your character strong-willed? that can easily turn into stubbornness. is your character compassionate? maybe they give too many chances. are they loyal? then they’ll destroy the world for the people they love.
it works the other way around too: maybe your villain only hates the protagonist’s people because they love their own and just have a twisted sense of how to protect them. maybe your antagonist is arrogant, but they’ll be confident in everything they do.
tl;dr “your curses are your blessings, and your blessings are your curses” there is no such thing as a character flaw, just a strength that has been stretched too far.
This is such a fabulous flip side of what I’ve always known about villians. That their biggest weakness is that they always assume their own motivations are the motives of others.
I finally managed to get hold of a copy of my dissertation! You can read it on Google Docs HERE. Please feel free to download and cite the work if it helps you with your own studies. 🙂
You guys, this is 70 pages of analysis of tumblr language and you should probably read it. I know I’m going to.
I’m sold on the strength of the table of contents alone
An incomplete list of descriptive paradigms for physical immortality – a resource for tabletop RPGs and other situations where you might find yourself playing or writing a character who can’t be hurt through conventional means.
Superman: The standard option – physical dangers just bounce off of you. If something does manage to injure you, you’ll display signs of pain or discomfort, and may exhibit light bruising, a thin trickle of blood, or some other cosmetic damage, but nothing short of complete destruction can violate your bodily integrity.
G-Rated: A series of unlikely coincidences arranges for injuries that you suffer to be much less severe than they should be. Fatal plummets become embarrassing pratfalls, and plunging into a fire merely leaves you artfully singed. Should you have enemies, they likely find you extremely frustrating to deal with.
Looney Tunes: You stretch and squash like a cartoon character, or else your body is simply amorphous. The effects of injuries tend to be exaggerated, but inflict no long-term impairment; for example, you might be cut in half, burnt to ash, or shattered like glass by trauma that wouldn’t ordinarily produce such extreme results, but quickly recover.
Zombie: You’re no more resistant to injury than an ordinary person, but being injured simply doesn’t particularly impair your ability to act. You’ll just keep going through anything short of complete bodily dismemberment, and even in that situation, your severed limbs may continue to act with far greater effectiveness than they really should.
Jekyll & Hyde: Trauma that should incapacitate or kill you instead causes you to transform into or be replaced by something else, typically an entity that can more effectively remove or escape the threat. The process later reverses itself, leaving you unharmed; you may or may not remember what your replacement did in your absence.
Skinsuit: Your human form is something you wear like a suit. Damaging it doesn’t meaningfully injure you, though it may impair your ability to act in a human fashion; in essence, injuries are recontextualised so that they change your ability to interact with the world rather than reducing it. Tentacles are traditional but not mandatory.
Puppet Strings: Your body is something that you have rather than something that you are. As you become progressively more damaged, it becomes progressively more apparent to onlookers that your body is being driven or dragged about by some outside force. You may or may not be able to replace it in the event of complete destruction.
Reset Button: You can be hurt or killed in the usual fashion, but no matter what happens to you, you just show up again later as though nothing happened. This may involve time manipulation, literal reincarnation, or some sort of metatextual contrivance. If killed, you may or may not remember dying.
Disposable: You’re actually one of a large number of essentially identical entities, typically a hive mind (if biological) or part of a product line (if mechanical). Destroyed instances are simply replaced. There may be a fixed number of you; if not, you may depend on some sort of external facility to produce more of you.
Outside Context: Your nature is sufficiently weird that it’s unclear what would qualify as an injury for you. The archetypal example is an intangible ghost, though there are many other possibilities. This usually involves a set of concomitant limitations on how you can interact with the world – it’s as alien to you as you are to it!
A couple months ago I left Friday evening, after work, for a trip up the coast with my girlfriend @suspected-spinozist. We drove up to Mendocino and spent the weekend hiking along the coast and exploring botanical gardens and having a lovely time, and then drove back down for work Monday.
I was basically useless the whole next week. I’d predicted that would happen, and I thought it’d be worth it (and it was absolutely worth it.) When I do things, I am spending my ability to do things. If I do things all weekend, I will find it nearly impossible to get anything done all week. I know exactly how much energy for extraneous tasks I have, and if I spend it I will start failing at my non-extraneous tasks, and if I push that I will start failing to eat.
Because this is my experience of the world, resource conservation models of disability are super relatable to me. I experience really sharp tradeoffs between all of the things I care about. I frequently say no to doing something cool or fun or interesting because I need to save the energy. I have limited ability to do stuff, it regenerates slowly, and having to do stuff when I’m out of ability-to-do-stuff will set me back for even longer. For that reason, I spend lots of my energy on resource conservation – thinking and planning how to do as little stuff as possible while staying on top of my life.
The most common conservation model of disability is the ‘spoons’ one that originated in the chronic illness community. There’s been a lot of arguing over who gets to lay claim to ‘spoons’, but certainly anyone can lay claim to a resource conservation model in general.
I talked recently to someone whose brain works very differently from mine. If they have the structures in place that they need to succeed, they will just keep on being able to do stuff until one of those structures breaks down. They can pack their weekend and then work all week; they can have something after work every single night. But if a structure crumbles on them, suddenly they can’t do much of anything.
The person I talked to was familiar with resource conservation models, and this really harmed them when their structures crumbled. They found advice to cut back on the stuff they were doing, save energy, commit to the minimum necessary, cancel plans. And none of that helped, plus it’s actually really depressing and isolating to do the absolute minimum you need to survive every day, so they ended up just as stuck and now without any of the things that made them happy.
So I think there are people who, instead of a conservation model, benefit from a momentum model – they have a state in which they can get stuff done, and once they’ve built up the structures they’ve need they can just stay there and add stuff to the structure. If they lose their ability to do things there’s a structure that needs replacing – cutting back in general won’t help.
In practice, almost everyone is probably a mixture of these things. Even people who mostly run on momentum would probably hit the point where their ability to do stuff traded off against their ability to do other stuff if, say, they were cutting back on their sleep to crowd more things into their day. Even people who have to shepherd their resources really carefully sometimes have things (like blogging, for me) which are easy and effortless as long as it’s part of their daily routine. And I bet there are people who need to resource-conserve for physical activity but whose socialization or intellectual output is best modeled as a momentum thing, or conversely people who can exercise every day as long as it’s part of their routine but need to carefully plan when they’ll have to expend willpower on tasks like writing.
So it’s probably good to have both models in your head – both because they could both apply to you, in different contexts, and because they will definitely both apply to some people you’re giving advice to.
when i was very small i assumed this song was about some lady who literally kept a human face in a jar by the door and since father mckenzie buried her that meant that he also killed her and basically i thought eleanor rigby was about zombies until i was like 12 years old
This is so much better than anything I could’ve envisioned listening to the song.
Mongolians are cool because they’ve merged their traditional and modern ways of life so rather than having poverty due to losing all their important skills they just live in their yurts with their cows and 827474874mbs internet
sure their GDP in dollars is low but when you can survive like your anscestors did it doesn’t mean anything, nothing wrong with adding a motorcycle and wifi into the mix
Everyone should live like their ancestors did 1000 years ago but with the addition of wifi tbh
Adapt. Survive.
Mongolia will be the only functioning society after we descend into the Mad Max Era, they are already ready
just moving along like everyone else 