Category: language

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Caring And Sharing Words

help – āwhina

A child cries: “I lost my letter R!” A man says “My dog will help you – he’s an r-finder!” His dog goes into the bushes and comes back with a letter R.

give – takoha

A family is sitting around eating Mexican food when a baby stretches out a hand and says “Give. Give. Taco here.”

share – toha

A lady at a party produces a bowl full of toes. She goes around sharing them, saying “Get a toe here.”

care – kumanu

A man cares lovingly for a cow, who shits into a wheelbarrow that the man wheels over to a gigantic pile of shit with a sign that says “Cow Manure”.

neglect – whakahapa

A child sits outside, neglected. Its parents neglect it by sitting inside partying. The child picks up some binoculars and sees a person playing a harp on a distant hill. It can see the far car harper.

contribute/provide – homai

A donations collector approaches a bunch of gangsters. One of the gangsters says “Okay homies,” and they all contribute some money.

The Māori word for neglect – whakahapa – shares a “f-k-h-p” construction with the English phrase ‘far car harper’.

kind/to show kindness to – atawhai

A really tough-looking man jumps when a nurse kindly wraps a bandage around a sore finger. She says “So you’re not such a toughie!”

nasty – whakawiri

A soldier says “I’m worried.” With a nasty expression, his sergeant says nastily “Fuck worry!”

support – taituarā

A tuatara, supported on the shoulders of two other tuataras, reaches up and pulls down a piece of fruit.

take – tango

A man holds out a twenty dollar note, and a couple tangoes up to him to take it.

thank/acknowledge – mihi

A man shakes hands with a doctor. The man says “I’d like to thank you for fixing my head.”

consider – whaiwhakaaro

A car drives around with three bagpipers leaning out the windows playing their pipes. A man looks at the piper car and says “They should consider those trying to sleep.”

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The above is an excerpt from the upcoming Learn Maori Vocabulary With Mnemonics, by Jeff Ngatai, due to be published by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

Writing Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder

Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder (HPPD) is an uncommon condition that arises as a consequence of permanent perceptual changes brought on by use of hallucinogens. There is almost no data on the prevalence of this condition, and some don’t even believe it exists. Nevertheless, this article will discuss how to believably portray characters with HPPD.

HPPD usually causes a problem because of visual disturbances that are akin to those that accompany a hallucinogenic experience. It’s common to see glowing halos around various objects, or visual trails that linger behind moving objects. It’s also possible to perceive objects as being much larger than they actually are, or much smaller. Some people even see a kind of “visual snow” between objects, like the static on a television set. Auditory hallucinations are also possible.

A character who has HPPD might appear kind of ‘spaced out’ to the other characters. Those other characters might suspect that the one with HPPD is, or has been, on a heavy drug of some kind. Because their perceptions are so vivid, a character with HPPD might be too distracted to pay proper attention to what’s going on around them. This could create a number of social difficulties for that character.

The author might decide that writing a character with HPPD is not very interesting if focus is placed solely on visual and perhaps auditory disturbances. It might be possible to tell a far richer and more engaging story by showing the reader some of the other lingering psychological effects of psychedelics, especially the deeper emotional and spiritual ones.

The problem with this approach is that one soon steps outside the bounds of the clinical – which is perfectly fine for the sake of literature, but it has to be kept in mind that the strictures of the DSM are distantly removed from what follows here.

Many psychedelic drugs have the capacity to break down a person’s existing perception of reality and replace it with something entirely different. This means that some of the persisting perceptions that arise from hallucinogenic drugs use are not so much sensual, but intuitive.

A common persisting perception from using hallucinogens is a belief that the material world isn’t real. Our culture is materialist; we take for granted that the material world is real and that the human brain generates consciousness. For the vast majority of us, it seems intuitively true that the material world genuinely exists and that the brain gives rise to consciousness, and this perception is so common that it’s taken for granted by most.

People who have HPPD might no longer believe in materialism. They may feel that, in the course of a hallucinogenic trip, they were granted a particular insight into the way the cosmos truly functions. Maybe they now believe that the world is a dream in the mind of God. A character who has had a change in perceptions relating to cosmic attitudes might find themselves coming into conflict with some of the other characters around them. Theirs could be a story of how easy it is to get ostracised from a community for having unique beliefs.

In practice, it doesn’t actually matter whether materialism is correct or not; a character who becomes a non-materialist as a result of a hallucinogenic experience will have extreme difficulty fitting into society in any case. They will frequently be rejected and mocking for being mentally ill. In particular, it will be impossible for them to convince a psychiatrist that their new belief is anything other than a mental illness. A character who thinks like this will therefore likely be an outsider to some degree.

Another common change in perception relates to the presence of a light at the end of the tunnel. Dovetailing with materialism is atheism – the two seem to follow each other closely. The vast majority of people who were raised atheist do not believe in the presence of a benevolent force that watches over their life with a desire to end their suffering. The cosmos is indifferent to human suffering and misery.

A person who has a strong experience with a hallucinogen can easily come to change their opinion on this subject. It might be that your protagonist has suddenly decided to believe in God – not the God of Abraham, but the benevolent, all-pervading force that gives rise and motion to the world. This might not be received well by the other characters in your story, especially if they are materialists, or if they believe in a dead God such as the Abrahamic one. They will probably think your protagonist is mad or evil.

This can make for an interesting story because of the contrast between the good feelings that arise naturally inside a person who has spiritual satisfaction, and the bad feelings that comes from the outside world as a consequence. Their social life might become much more difficult than before, on account of pressure to go back to the socially-approved way of thinking. This could push them into the arms of a new group of people, such as those who have also seen beyond.

These persisting changes in perception are much more subtle than the visual and auditory ones, but they might have just as large an impact on a person’s ability to live a normal life, primarily because of the social disruption just mentioned. In extreme cases, these changes in perception might make employment also impossible, leading to radical life changes that could lead anywhere.

Writing a character with HPPD is no easy task, because it is likely that most of the readers are not intimately familiar with the effects of hallucinogens and so will have difficulty relating to the often bizarre and surreal perceptual changes that accompany the condition. However, if executed skillfully, a tale with a character who has HPPD could be highly entertaining, insightful or even edifying.

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This article is an excerpt from Writing With The DSM (Writing With Psychology Book 5), edited by Vince McLeod and due for release by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2018/19.

The Three Definitions of ‘Racist’

The word ‘racist’ has a variety of meanings depending on the political goals of the person using it

The word ‘racist’ has been overused so badly in 21st century discourse that it no longer has any real meaning. Originally used to describe a person who held unfair prejudices against a group of people on the basis of their skin colour, it now has a wide range of meanings depending on the political motivations of the person pointing the finger.

The first definition is what can be called the “supremacist” orientation. This is the attitude a person has if they believe that their race is the greatest one of all and everyone else is naturally inferior. It is also the “classical” racism that was espoused by Adolf Hitler, and is the real type of racism that everyone is afraid of.

The problem with a supremacist orientation of racism is that it obligates the holder to be fighting all the time. As the alpha male in any dominance hierarchy soon learns, claiming to be the top dog means you’re always fighting off challengers. This is great in a “live fast, die young” sense, but it doesn’t make for peace or order.

In an effort to bring peace on Earth, The Powers That Be have made immense efforts to discourage this sort of racism since the end of World War II, in which this sort of racism was directly responsible for the deaths of 50,000,000 people.

The second definition is specific, and could be termed the “experiential” version of racism. People in this category are not supremacists because they do not believe that their own specific race is generally superior, so they are not racists in the first sense. In this category are people who have learned to not like members of specific races through adverse life experiences.

People in this category can, in fact, can be the opposite of supremacists, as they often are in the case of white people who happily concede that the average IQ of a Far East Asian is higher than that of a white person, or in the case of Far East Asians who happily concede that white people are much less corrupt when in government than Far East Asians.

They often get accused of being racists, though, because their experience has caused them to hold unflattering opinions of some races and these opinions are often considered supremacist by social justice warriors looking for someone to freak out at. The truth prevails, however, because these people tend to find each other and reinforce each others’ experiences.

The third is the “Marxist” definition of racism, which is the weaponised version. Here the concern is with how to use guilt about racism as a tool for browbeating those perceived to be bourgeoisie. Anywhere you hear the ludicrous assertion that racism isn’t real racism unless the person doing it is part of the bourgeoisie, you know you’re in Marxist territory.

This weaponised version of racism is used to manipulate people, usually white people, into believing that they have inherited racial debts from the age of colonialism, and can only clear these racial debts by supporting Marxist policies like mass Muslim immigration. This is why it is so frequently brought out when someone criticises the practices of the religion of Islam, which is not a race.

Unfortunately for the Marxists, their attempts to guilt-trip people into supporting their policies has backfired, because no-one knows which of these definitions is being used at any one time. Manipulating people through dishonest use of language is typical for people with totalitarian mindsets, but overuse of it causes the populace to become aware.

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If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis).

Te Reo With Mnemonics: Garden Words

Flower – putiputi

Valerie Adams throws a shotput, only instead of the shot it’s a bouquet of flowers. She throws a bouquet twice, so put-put.

Snail – ngata

A day slowly turns to night and, when it does, a whole lot of snails come out.

Shovel – kāheru

A man sees another man walking along with a shovel over his shoulder, and calls out “Come here, you!”

Tree – rākau

A crazy old man uses a rake to clear the leaves from a tree that’s still standing and healthy.

Rake – purau

A woman takes a rake and purees it in a blender by pushing it in shaft first.

Grass – pātītī

A woman lies sunbathing in the grass. Instead of a bikini, her breasts are covered with pies. She has a pie-titty.

The Maori word for tree – rākau – sounds like the English word ‘Rake’

Leaf – rau

A boy nails a bunch of leaves to a wall in a row.

Bone – kōiwi

Bones are arranged on the ground in the shape of a kiwi.

Path – ara

A bunch of Mongrel Mob members walk down a garden path, chanting “Araaa!”

Bee – pī

A man is taking a pee at the edge of his garden, and he gets stung on the penis by a bee.

Wall – tara

A small girl walks up to an imposing brick wall and tears it down because it is only made of crepe paper.

Lawnmower – pōtarotaro

A lawnmover runs over a bunch of potatoes on the lawn.

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The above is an excerpt from the upcoming Learn Maori Vocabulary With Mnemonics, by Jeff Ngatai, due to be published by VJM Publishing in the summer of 2017/18.